Forget the Days Gone By
by bcbdrums
Summary: "Shego, how did you get used to your powers? I mean, um...you didn't just...know how to use them immediately, did you?" Drakken asked. [Shego's backstory.]
1. You are lost out in the desert

_A/N: This is my headcanon. This is Shego's story, from the comet strike to post-canon. I wrote this whole monstrosity in three days, so please help me with the typos and whatnot. And in general, please comment. I like comments._

_Each chapter will open with notes with specific trigger warnings. The overall rating of the fic is Teen. Most chapters could be called Gen, however._ _This first chapter starts with a prologue in italics. When the italics are gone, chapter 1 has begun. Warnings for this chapter are: children in danger and fire._

_This is also posted on AO3. I decided to put it here because I think more of the fandom hangs out here. I've noticed that it's harder to format fics here than it used to be... And since only allowed four characters to be tagged, this also includes Gemini, Mego, Wego, and some OCs._

_A little bit of necessary background about my headcanon... This takes place approximately four months after the episode 'Graduation.' Drakken and Shego, still desiring to do evil of course, have decided to lay low and pretend to be good since world governments are now only too happy to throw money at them for all of Drakken's evil inventions. A team of doctors and botanists have developed an experimental cure for his plant mutation which he has been using for about two months, but it has only been marginally successful. Meanwhile, the pair of them are creating all manner of secret evil plans to launch at the right time._

_And that should bring you up to speed for the beginning of this fic. The reader POV changes back and forth between Drakken and Shego, but it's Shego for almost the entire fic._ _Strap in and enjoy the ride!_

* * *

_Prologue_

_"Good riddance, Electro-foe!" Hego said, then turned with a grin. "Thanks for your help, Miss Possible. Sis'!" he wrapped Shego in a warm embrace. "It's good to see you on the side of justice, and all things right and good again!"_

_"What he said," Mego added, setting his arm around her._

_"Ditto!" the Wegos exclaimed and gave her a squeeze._

_The five siblings shared a smile and moment from a time long past, and then the four boys waved and went their way. Shego turned to see her former teen foe watching her with an affectionate grin._

_"Hego's right," Kim said, "It_

was _good to be on the same side."_

_Shego set her hand on Kim's shoulder. "Yeah, Kimmie, I couldn't tell you this when I was evil, but...I actually think you're pretty awesome."_

_Kim's brow rose. "You do?"_

_"Yeah. In fact you remind me of me. Or what I could have been, if I had grown up with what you have. Sometimes I'm really, really jealous."_

_"Oh..."_

_"Don't ever change, 'kay? One of us deserves to get it right."_

* * *

**Chapter 1: You are lost out in the desert**

Shego grimaced as Drakken pulled off his shirt.

"Turn around," she said impatiently, and he quickly complied. "Just because I agreed to this doesn't mean I want to look at you."

Her comment had the desired effect, she saw, as he sat on the small stool and hunched forward in insecurity.

She squeezed the prescribed tube until a generous amount of medicated cream was on her fingertips, and then approached him.

"Move your stupid ponytail," she said.

He swept the offending hair aside, revealing the breaks in his skin where the mutant vines would emerge.

"Eugh," she scowled in disgust, but noted that it was definitely better than the last time she had done this. "You've been taking the pills?"

"Every day," he said shyly, glancing over his shoulder slightly. "How does it look?"

"Disgusting," she didn't hold back, biting her cheek to hold down nausea as she applied the cream. She knew that mutant super powers shouldn't bother her, but his vines were nothing like her glow. "All right, move your hair."

He reached back and started feeling around at the nape of his neck until he found the other exit point—where the flower petals had burst from—and held his hair aside.

"This one's better..." she said absentmindedly as she added more cream to that spot, frowning. When she finished she took his hair and re-tied it for him. Goodness knows whenever he tried he spread the cream through it and it became an oily, tangled mess.

She stepped back when she was done and wiped her fingers on a towel. "There, it's done. Now put your shirt back on."

He hurriedly complied and then turned to face her, a shy smile on his face.

"Thank you," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "I'm as sick of those stupid plants as you are," she said, leaving his room. She wasn't surprised to hear him follow.

"I'm...sorry for all the trouble they've caused you," he said.

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him before plopping onto the sofa and picking up her nail file.

"Well, we'd be slaves on an alien planet without them..." she said with a half-shrug. "If you'd had better control over them, they could have been useful."

Drakken stepped toward her, fidgeting. She tensed slightly, knowing this was a sign that he was about to say something she wouldn't like.

"How, um...how did you get used to your powers?"

She sighed loudly to express her annoyance and crossed her legs, starting on her nails.

"I mean, um...you didn't just...know how to use them immediately, did you?" he pressed.

She glared at him. But something about the look in his eyes gave her pause. He wasn't trying to pry into her life. He seemed to genuinely need and want...support.

He looked down in disappointment, continuing to fidget. She rolled her eyes again and reached over next to her on the sofa and patted the empty space.

"All right, sit down Swamp Thing. I'll tell you all about it."

He frowned at her, hurt, but the look changed to curiosity as he sat and moved closer to her than she would have liked.

"You were hit by a comet, weren't you? How did you survive that? Why isn't it in public record?"

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"N-not that I've looked, or anything," he said with an innocent grin.

She ignored him and leaned back, focusing on her nails. "Shut up before I change my mind."

"Shutting up," he said, scooting closer to her with a look of anticipation.

Shego sighed. "Okay. So, it was...eighteen years ago..."

* * *

"Brendan, stop it!"

A husky, energetic boy of thirteen had just leapt from a rickety bench over the head of his sister and twin baby brothers to the floor near the window of their tree house, slashing back and forth with his toy sword all the while.

"Yeah, cut it out!" said the fifth sibling, a lanky boy of eleven reclining on the bench and playing with action figures on his chest.

"Mom isn't going to let us bring them up here again if you don't stop!" the girl continued, her arms hugging the two one-year-olds who were trying to toddle away.

"Come on Sis'," the oldest boy protested with a wide grin, "If they're going to be part of our superhero team we have to train them to be fearless!"

"Hey, not everyone wants to play your stupid hero game," the lanky boy replied, rolling off the bench and scooting over to his sister and the twins.

"Brody..." whined the oldest sibling, his playful mood crumpling, "you have to play! Otherwise we don't have a science expert!"

"Maybe I'd rather be a villain. I'll play the mad scientist, instead," the eleven-year-old said, grabbing one of the twins from his sister. "Hey...you know, we could experiment on Dylan and Alex, like in that episode of the Fearless Ferret! You know where those twins were separated at birth and one of them grows up into a hero and the other into a villain and then they end up fighting each other?"

Brody pulled the pacifier out of the mouth of the twin he had grabbed, and the tiny boy immediately burst into tears.

"Brody!" his sister shrieked, grabbing the pacifier and the baby back from him.

The lanky boy turned away sulkily and crossed his arms. "Just want someone else on my villain team..."

"You're not villains, we're _all_ heroes!" the oldest boy said, leaping again and this time landing right next to his siblings and pointing his toy sword toward the babies.

"Brendan, if you don't stop it right now I'm telling."

"Sis', we have to make them brave," he said, his grin having returned.

"They're too young for your game," she said angrily. "Can you just grow up? We have to watch them up here! They could choke on a toy, you know."

"Heh," Brody said, laying on his stomach and smirking up at her. "Big sis' hits puberty and suddenly she's turned into Mom."

The girl gasped, her face reddening. She drew one of the babies into her lap and clutched him to her, finally allowing the other to toddle away from her.

Brendan, to his credit, plopped down on the trapdoor entrance to the tree-house in case the baby started wandering that way.

"Did _your_ classmates start acting like this once they got to middle school?" Brody asked his older brother.

"Uh..." it was Brendan's face that reddened then. "Well, some of them, I guess."

"Ooooh, big bro' has a crush on someone!" Brody continued and started cackling.

"Hm," their sister smirked, looking over at her oldest brother whose face had turned even more red. Served him right. "Well, who is it?"

"Um...um..." Brendan sputtered, rubbing the back of his neck. "Well, it's...Donna."

Brody laughed even harder, and the wandering twin toddled over to him and tackled him as much as a baby can, joining in on his brother's apparent joy.

"But...she's in my grade!" their sister protested.

"Well, uh..." Brendan said, looking down at his toy sword in humiliation.

Brody snickered. "Come on, Sis', it's obvious."

The twelve-year-old girl looked between her two brothers, the oldest looking less and less like the hero he was always pretending to be and the younger more and more like the villain he always whined that he wanted to play.

"What does Donna have that the girls in _his_ grade don't?"

"Um..."

He scooted closer to her, beginning to giggle. "She...she has..."

"What?" his sister asked, frowning now as Brody started to laugh uncontrollably and Brendan began to look very nervous.

"She has...she, she has...big boobs! Ah hahaha!"

Brody was now kicking the floor in his fit of laughter. The two babies joined in gleefully, not understanding a word, only the apparent emotion.

Brendan looked over guiltily at his sister, who looked down at her own flat chest as her cheeks reddened again.

"I'm telling!" Brendan growled, his ever-present smile vanishing. He began to open the trapdoor when Brody suddenly stopped laughing and sat up.

"Hey, what's that?" he asked, pointing out the window.

The three oldest siblings crowded into the tiny hole in the wall of the tree-house to peer up into the sky. They had to shield their eyes from the brightness of the sun, which had a strange multi-colored hue today and seemed to be getting larger.

The babies toddled over to join their siblings, bumping into their legs.

"What's what?" Brendan asked.

"That thing that looks like the sun!" Brody said.

"It's not the sun?" Brendan said, squinting.

"No...it's not," their sister said in alarm, reaching down to scoop up the babies. "It's a meteor!"

"Meteors are what they're called when they're _in_ space," Brody corrected. "So it would be a meteor_ite_."

"Help me!" she said in a panic, trying to open the trapdoor with her foot, arms full of babies.

"Come on Sis', it's not going to hit us," Brendan said, still squinting at it.

"Uh..." Brody said nervously, starting to back away from the window.

Brendan's eyes widened and he met the terrified gaze of his sister. He leapt for the trapdoor and took one of the babies from her as Brody tried to push past them.

"Me first!" he said.

They were the last words spoken before the siblings' lives were forever changed.

The memories of the actual comet strike none of them could recall, but they all remembered waking up among flaming timbers and hours having apparently passed given the sun setting on the horizon.

"Ugh... What...what...?" were the first words to leave the twelve-year-old girl's lips when she woke up, her head throbbing and every inch of her body tingling with...something.

She gasped as she sat up suddenly and looked around at a foreign landscape. Around her were broken and blackened timbers, some smoldering and others not. The tree that had held the cherished place of imagination for she and her brothers had fallen, its roots ripping up the earth beneath it. And beyond the wreckage was more destroyed earth where the...meteorite? must have continued its journey.

She gasped in fear as she saw her home on fire, and the neighbor's home, and their trees all aflame with smoke rising high and blackening the sky. And then she saw the water from the fire hoses falling on the flames, slowly putting a halt to the devastation.

"Brendan!" she shrieked, standing up and brushing soot from her pale arms. It didn't occur to her in that moment that she had no burns. "Mom! Dad!" she cried, running toward the house. And then she stopped, eyes going wide with fright.

"Dylan! Alex!" she screamed, turning back to the destruction.

"We've got them!" the steady voice of her eldest brother spoke from somewhere behind her.

She turned toward the sound, and through the wafts of smoke she saw the familiar husky figure holding one of the babies in his arms, and her lankier but just-as-tall brother holding the other. They were standing against the back wall of the house near the corner, where there were no flames. She ran toward them.

"What about Mom and—" she stopped suddenly, eyes going wide again as she took in the appearance of her brothers. They were all covered in soot, as she imagined she was, but...beneath the soot was something else.

The color of their hair had changed. Brendan's was blue, Brody's was purple, and the twins' wispy locks were red.

"What's wrong with your hair?" she asked.

"We don't know," Brendan said worriedly.

"And...Brody, your skin!" she cried, noticing despite the soot that it was distinctly purple.

"What about yours?" he countered, crossing his arms and looking uncharacteristically afraid.

She looked down at her hands and saw that beneath the soot, her skin had changed to a ghoulishly pale green. She gasped in shock and then pulled some of her thick curls over her shoulder. Her hair was still black at least, but she could see a hint of green when the fire shone on it just so.

"What happened to us?" she said.

"I...guess it was that meteorite," Brody said, and handed her the twin he was holding who had started to cry.

She coughed as the smoke grew thicker around them.

"We have to get out of here!" she cried.

"I know, but—" Brendan began, but was cut off as a loud crack like an explosion sounded from somewhere very near them. They looked around and gasped in unison as they saw a tall pine in their neighbor's yard engulfed in flames, falling rapidly toward them.

With smoke and fire all around, there was nowhere to run. The children cowered next to the wall of their burning house in fear.

"No!" Brendan cried desperately, throwing his hands up as he tried to cover his younger siblings.

The heat and weight of the falling inferno was suddenly all around them. But...the tree hadn't crushed them?

They all opened their eyes and gaped as Brendan's hands, enveloped by a strange blue glow, held the tree safely above them. And his hands didn't burn.

"Wh-...what?" he said, not believing his eyes.

"Get rid of it!" his sister cried, "before we all catch fire!"

Brendan took a breath and heaved upward. The tree flew off of them as if it were light as a toothpick and fell in the opposite direction of which it had fallen. Unfortunately, that was across a fence and into another neighbor's yard. The blue-haired teen stepped back in amazement.

"What...what's wrong with me?" he said, looking at his glowing hands.

"You have superpowers!" Brody exclaimed with a giddy, greedy look in his eyes. "What can I do?" he wondered aloud and stepped away from the house, his fear gone.

Brendan stepped back to his sister's side and picked up the other crying twin again, watching as his more reckless brother rushed toward one of the burning timbers with hands outstretched.

"Ow!" Brody cried when his hands connected with the flames. But in response his entire body glowed purple and then like magic, he shrunk down in physical size until he vanished.

The older siblings gasped, staring at the spot where their brother had been. And then suddenly he reappeared, growing up as tall as the trees.

"I have growing powers!" he cried excitedly, his voice booming such that the others covered their ears.

The amplified sound caused the babies to cry ever louder, and then suddenly instead of two of them there were four. And then six. And then eight. The two oldest siblings gasped again as the ground by their feet was now populated by far too many crying babies, in addition to the two originals in their arms.

"Don't put them down!" Brendan cried, or we'll never be able to tell them apart.

"I won't!" his sister agreed, her eyes wide in shock.

"Hey, watch this!" Brody boomed above them. They looked up and watched as he reached down across the street and grabbed two hoses out of the hands of the firefighters, and began putting out one of the house fires at point-blank. "Pretty cool!"

"Hm..." Brendan said, grinning and handing the twin he held to his sister. "Let's see what I can do!"

She watched as her now blue-haired brother started gathering up the burning timbers and piling them all together, effectively stopping the spread of the fire. Brody turned one of the hoses onto the pile as Brendan continued running about the burning lots and putting his apparent super-strength to work.

"Hm...I wonder what I can do..." the green-skinned girl mused to herself.

At the moment, there wasn't anything she _could_ do as long as her ankles were surrounded by crying baby copies. So freaky.

"There, there," she rubbed her youngest brothers' backs. "It will be all right. Sister's got you."

Miraculously, their cries became less frantic and one by one the copies began disappearing in a red glow until she was left with only the real twins.

"Okay," she said, setting them down. "Now...what do I do?"

She looked at her other brothers, Brody's entire body enveloped in a purple glow, and Brendan's fists surrounded by blue as he lifted heavy objects.

"Hmmm..."

She walked toward the pile of boards from the tree-house that Brendan had created and then extended her hands toward it. Nothing happened.

She crossed her arms in frustration. She must have _some_ kind of superpower if all of her brothers did, didn't she?

Just then a loud crack from above drew her attention, and she watched as a flaming branch fell from the other tree next to her house...right toward Dylan and Alex.

"No!" she cried, reaching for them desperately and knowing she couldn't make it in time. But as she reached out her hands glowed green and a nebulous blob of the glow shot out and struck the branch, knocking it away from her baby brothers.

She stopped with a gasp. She concentrated and aimed her hands at the branch again. When the green glow emerged this time, it did more than knock the branch away—it incinerated it.

Her eyes widened. "What...? _Fire_ powers!?"

She looked at Brody and Brendan who appeared very heroic now as they were cleaning up the mess and giving the real firefighters access to the more difficult areas.

"How am I supposed to help with fire powers..." she said, returning to the twins and picking them both up. "Maybe...if I just..."

She shifted the babies awkwardly over to one arm and aimed her free hand upward at one of the burning tree limbs that was still attached. She grinned when her hand glowed green, but then was startled as the twins suddenly cried out.

Her other hand had glowed as well.

She nearly dropped them in fear, but had the presence of mind to set them down as they cried in pain.

She had hurt them. She had hurt her baby brothers.

As they cried they glowed red, and in moments more than a dozen babies were surrounding her on the singed grass.

"Oh, no!" she said and knelt down, quickly gathering the two real ones into her lap. But then she held her hands away, afraid of touching them.

Sure, they looked okay, but she had fire powers and she had _hurt_ them... What if her glow just...started up spontaneously as she was holding them? She had no idea how it even worked. What if it happened again?

"Brendan!" she called loudly, and her brother heard and ran toward her, the backyards now swarming with firefighters.

"Isn't this great? We're _actually_ superheroes now!" he said, grinning widely.

"I hurt them," she interrupted.

"What?" he said, confused.

"My power is some kind of fire. I hurt them!" she said, tears filling her eyes.

Brendan knelt and carefully crawled between the crying copies until he could pick up the real twins from her lap. He examined them closely.

"They look fine," he said.

"But they cried when I touched them! I know I hurt them!" she said.

"I'm sure they're just—"

"No!" she said, and suddenly the green glow enveloped her hands again. She gasped and held her hands out to her sides, as far away as she could get them.

Just then Brody ran up to them, shrinking down to normal size with his purple glow as he did so.

"This is _awesome!"_ he said. "It was getting dumb as a game, but being a real hero is way cool, Bro'," he said, grabbing Brendan in an uncharacteristic hug. "Whoa...cloning," he continued, staring wide-eyed at all the crying red-haired babies.

Their sister cried silently, wondering how they were able to control their new powers so easily while she had no idea. She aimed her hands at the timber pile again and thought about hitting it. As she did, both hands fired and the blast knocked several pieces of wood away.

"Hey, you're like a cannon, Sis'!" Brody said, admiring her green glow.

She tried to blink away her tears. Maybe...it would be okay. But she was no help in putting out a fire.

Just then a firefighter approached them warily. "Um..." the mustached man said, "are you kids...okay?"

"Better than okay, Mister," Brody said, facing him with his hands on his hips. "We're superheroes!"

"I can see that..." the firefighter said, though he sounded more afraid than reassured. "Where, ah...do you come from?"

All three siblings pointed at the house behind them, which was still smoldering.

"You live _there?"_ the man said disbelievingly.

"Are our parents okay?" Brendan asked, his face sobering instantly.

"Yes, they're right out in front. They've been extremely worried about you, and—"

Forgetting her glow for a moment, the twelve-year-old girl grabbed the babies and began walking around the house in a hurry. Her other brothers followed her and soon all of the siblings were running.

"Mom! Dad!" she was the first one to cry out when she saw them standing next to an ambulance.

"Kids!" the two parents called.

A moment later the family were all hugs, tears, and smiles, marveling at the bizarre changes to the children.

If only life had just continued from there, everything could have been fine.

* * *

"So what happened?" Drakken asked, sitting cross-legged on the sofa now as Shego finished shaping her last nail.

"What do you mean?" Shego asked dully.

"I mean...you were just children. I'm sure Go Tower wasn't there waiting for you to show up."

"Well, sort-of," she said, not looking at him. She had opened the door on memories long-sealed and the pain of them was slowly creeping into her heart.

"What do you mean, 'sort-of'?" he continued.

She turned and glowered at him. "Look, it's none of your business. I just got used to my powers, okay?"

She rose and stalked away, deep into the lair.

Drakken frowned sadly. It..._had_ been helpful, to hear that Shego hadn't immediately known how to use her powers. And hearing about her life before...knowing that she'd _had_ a life before evil...somehow made him feel better about his choices, too.

He rose from the sofa and went looking for her. He wanted to know more.


	2. Protect your body and guard your soul

_A/N: No warnings this chapter. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 2: Protect your body and guard your soul**

Drakken knocked on Shego's door, a steaming cup of jasmine tea and a strawberry scone on a tray in his hands.

"Shego?" he called softly.

"What do you want?" was the annoyed answer.

"I brought you something," he said. And then he waited, having learned that pressure wasn't the best tactic when trying to get on her good side. A minute later the door opened a crack and she peered at him, a curious look on her face.

His heart fluttered in triumph. "I-I'm sorry I upset you. Here's a fresh scone and some tea for you."

She opened the door fully and gaped at the tray. There was even a lace doily under the plate. Not that she liked doilies, necessarily, but it was...an appropriate touch. She reached for the tray, but he took a step back.

"I, ah...baked a whole platter. Would you like to come out and...share it with me?"

She didn't say a word, but after a few moments exited the room, eyeing him suspiciously.

He led the way down the hall and into the kitchen, where he had already laid out his own serving and had a separate plate piled high with the fresh baked goods. Also in the center of their small dining table the steaming kettle sat upon a trivet, and dishes of clotted cream and jam were on either side of the scone platter.

"A tea party, Doc? What's the catch?" Shego said, stopping and setting her hands on her hips.

"Well, ah..." Drakken grinned nervously as he set her side of the table, "I was hoping you could tell me about...how you got used to your powers."

"Ugh," Shego said, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms. "I do _not_ want to revisit my past again, Doc. It was irritating enough the first time."

"I'm sorry," Drakken said quickly, "but it's just...well... When you told me about accidentally hurting your brothers it reminded me of all the times that my flower has hurt you, and..."

Shego raised an eyebrow at him.

"And it's...nngh, it's been months and I'm still stuck with the darn thing. Just in case it's forever, I was hoping that you could...you know..."

"Look Doc, our experiences are totally different. I was just a kid when I got my powers. You're an adult. Or what passes for one..." she added under her breath. "My past won't be of any help to you."

Drakken sighed and sank into the chair on his side of the table, beginning to idly stir his tea.

Shego watched him suspiciously. It wasn't like him to give up. Although he had been nicer and had listened to her more ever since the Lorwardian invasion.

He seemed to have dropped the subject, until suddenly his eye twitched and he tensed in fear.

"Oh no. No, Shego! It's back!" he cried, reaching behind him and clawing at the nape of his neck.

"_Stop_ it," she demanded, marching forward, and he blinked in surprise, halting his efforts. "You remember what those scientists told you," she admonished.

She stepped behind him and peered down the back of his shirt. Sure enough, a pink flower had begun to emerge from the opening in his skin.

She held back the urge to vomit and grimaced, but didn't make a sound.

"Is it there?" he asked anxiously.

"Yeah, just barely," she said, giving a half-truth.

"Ohhh..." he whined and dropped his forehead to the table, silverware clattering at the impact.

Shego sighed and moved to sit across from him. "You're supposed to relax, remember? Stress makes it worse, they told you."

He looked up and nodded, his lower lip trembling.

"Agh, fine," Shego cried in annoyance. "Look, will you calm down if I tell you more about how I learned to use my powers?"

He seemed to perk up, but only slightly. He really hated his mutation.

She reached for the clotted cream and set a dollop on her scone. "So, you remember I told you that after the fire we had to move to a hotel, and everything sort of went back to normal? You know, except for my brothers and I having powers."

Drakken nodded, the tremble in his lip going away.

She sighed. She supposed it was her destiny to look after whiny, pathetic boys for her entire life. "Well, it was the last week of summer vacation before I started middle school..."

* * *

"Look at this, Dad!" Brody said, shrinking down to no bigger than a penny and then running up the inside of his father's shirt sleeve.

"Ah, whoa, hey, Son that's enough!" their father said, trying to hold still.

Brody emerged from his father's collar and then sat cross-legged on his shoulder, grinning from ear to ear.

Their father sighed heavily and straightened his tie. "That's pretty amazing, Son," he said with a tired smile.

"That's nothing. Watch me, Dad!" Brendan said, picking up the desk and holding it over his head.

"That's...very nice, Son," their father said from where he sat on the edge of the bed, looking between the tiny purple boy on his shoulder and the blue-haired one in front of him.

"You think you're so cool," Brody said in annoyance, sliding down the front of his father's suit jacket and rapidly growing to normal size once on the floor. "I bet I could grow as big as one of those skyscrapers out there!"

Brendan looked out the window at the tall buildings, and then past them at the boats out on the lake. "Yeah? Well I bet I could pick up one of those boats in the harbor!"

"Boys, you both have wonderful superpowers. There's no need to compete with each other," their father admonished, running his fingers wearily through his hair. "Why don't you play with your sister and brothers?"

Brendan and Brody looked to where their sister sat on the floor with the twins. She was always quiet whenever this argument began, since she couldn't show off her superpower. Not without destroying something or catching something on fire.

"Aw Dad, normal playing's no fun anymore," Brody complained. "I want to go out and fight some bad guys!"

Their dad had lay back on the hotel bed, dropping his forearm over his eyes. "No Son, there will be no fighting bad guys in this family."

"But Dad!" Brendan complained, "We're the perfect team! Like the Power Scouts on TV!"

The oldest sibling grabbed his middle-brother's shoulder and pulled him down onto the carpet where their sister and the babies were, playing with stuffed animals.

"We all have our own color and our own power to match our personality," he continued.

The hotel door opened and admitted their mother, who smiled a tired smile at them as she set grocery bags on the tiny hotel counter. She then joined their father on the bed, who sat up to greet her. She smoothed the skirt of her brown suit as he kissed her on the cheek.

"I have super strength of course because I'm the oldest and the smartest. And the twins have cloning powers because they're already like clones."

"What's my power mean?" Brody asked.

"Yours is...um...hmm..." Brendan furrowed his brow in thought.

"Matches your naughty-nice personality..." mumbled their sister, who had been silent so far.

"Hey!" Brody said, while Brendan laughed.

"Now we just need names," Brendan said. "Mom, what should our superhero names be?"

"Whatever you want, dear. Just as long as it includes everyone equally," she said tiredly, sitting close to her husband.

"Hmm..." Brendan said, standing up and looking out the window.

"We can be 'The Meteorites.' Get it?" Brody said with a laugh.

"Puh-lease," their sister said, rolling her eyes. "It sounds like something out of a bad comic book."

"We didn't raise you to talk like that, young lady," their father said. She looked away at the babies, feigning innocence.

"Hey, I know! Since we live in Go City, what if we were 'Team Go'?" Brendan said.

Brody and his sister exchanged skeptical looks.

"It's perfect!" Brendan cried, rejoining them on the carpet. "I'll be 'He-Go,' since I'm a boy, and you can be 'She-Go' since you're a girl," he said, pointing at his sister with a grin.

"Why don't I get to be 'He-Go'?" Brody asked anxiously.

"And Dylan and Alex can be...can be...'We-Go', since they're twins and they have the same power!" Brendan continued delightedly.

"I want to be He-Go!" Brody whined. "Mom, make him change it!"

"No, it was my idea!" Brendan said, running up to his parents.

"But I want to be He-Go!" Brody whined louder.

"Shh, the neighbors will hear you!" their mother admonished, stroking the younger brother's purple hair.

"Hey, I know," Brendan said with a smirk. "You can be 'Me-Go' since you only think about yourself!"

The purple boy fumed in anger while his two older siblings fell to the floor in laughter.

"Kids. That's enough," their father said sternly.

"Yes, Dad," Brendan said, scooting back to sit next to his sister and exchanging a smirk with her. Brody now looked close to tears.

"It doesn't matter anyway, because—" their mother began, but was cut off by a knock at the door. She exchanged a look with her husband. "Who could that be?"

She rose and opened the door to find four officers in a blue-gray uniform she didn't recognize crowding the hallway.

"Good day, madam," the man in front said. "May we speak with you and your husband?"

"Um... Well, who are you?" she asked as her husband joined her in the doorway.

"We represent the international secret security force known as Global Justice. And we have a proposition for you."

Their mother shrunk away, looking over her shoulder at the children in fear.

"Whatever it is, we're not interested," their father said firmly.

"I think you'll want to hear us out," the man continued, "before the government comes knocking on your door. And believe me, they will come knocking."

The children all huddled together now, listening intently. They watched as their parents exchanged uneasy looks.

"Who...did you say you are?"

"Please, may we come in?" the man said silkily.

After exchanging another look, the two adults stepped aside and gave the four officers admittance. One of them immediately began putting a tape in VHS player while another began attaching some sort of video camera to the window.

The remaining two—the man who had greeted them and a woman—stood side by side in front of the nervous parents. They looked remarkably similar despite being the opposite gender, having similar heights and builds, and the same reddish-brown hair and dark eyes.

"I am Dr. Sheldon Director. And this is my sister, Dr. Elizabeth Director. We are the co-presidents of Global Justice," he said, offering his hand for them to shake.

"Call me Betty," the female Dr. Director said, extending her hand after her brother.

"I'm...David. And this is my wife, Patricia."

"We know. And these are your very special children," Dr. Director said, he and his sister turning to look at the uniquely-hued individuals.

"I'm He-Go!" Brendan said, standing up and posing with his biceps flexed triumphantly.

"And I'm Me-Go!" Brody said, quickly joining his brother with a matching pose.

Sheldon Director chuckled and smiled at them. He peered around them to where the remaining three children were still on the floor.

"And let me guess..." he said, "you must be She-Go."

The green-skinned girl nodded silently.

Elizabeth Director knelt down and smiled at her. "And you must be calling the twins...We-Go? You know, my brother and I are twins."

The preteen gathered her baby brothers closer to her, one of them whimpering as he dropped his stuffed dog toy.

"I can see that you take excellent care of them, She-Go," the woman said with a smile before standing up again.

"Now, I'm sure you've all seen these news reels," Sheldon continued, stepping aside so they could all see the TV. The other officer pressed play on the VCR and a bright image filled the screen.

"Whoa...no static!" Brody said, kneeling right in front of the screen.

The picture showed the fire after the meteorite strike, filmed from the news helicopters above. But they were now seeing it in excellent color and clarity for the first time.

The picture also showed Brendan and Brody, using their new powers to help the firemen.

_"Unknown beings with strange powers help save neighborhood in lower Go City,"_ the newscaster's voice-over said, _"but where did these beings come from? And are they friend or foe? Eyewitness Fire Chief Dan Robbins was quoted as saying, 'They're just kids from one of the houses. I saw them run to their parents, scared as any other kids would be. I can't explain it.' So are these really just neighborhood children? Hear more eyewitness accounts, tonight at eleven."_

"Your children are quite the hot topic," Elizabeth said.

David sighed anxiously. "We know."

"Am I right in assuming they did not have superpowers before that comet struck your home?" Sheldon asked.

"It was a meteorite!" Brody said.

Sheldon frowned at him. "It was a comet."

"Oh..."

Sheldon turned back to the worried parents, brow raised.

"N-no, they didn't," David said.

"Unfortunately, this won't just blow over in the media. And with video as clear as this, the government will find you soon enough," Sheldon said ominously.

Patricia drew closer to her husband. "What will they want?"

"To experiment on your children. Find out how their powers work," Elizabeth said, "but we can help you before that happens."

The two parents exchanged a wary look. "How?"

"By turning them over to us," Sheldon said.

"What!? No!" David said.

"Please, let us explain," Elizabeth said gently. "We're curious, of course, but we're far more interested in your family's well-being. We can give your children a new identity—one the media and the world will accept. We can help them adapt to their powers. After all, they're not the only super-beings in the world."

"We're not?" Brendan said.

"Of course not, young man," Sheldon said, ruffling the boy's blue hair. "Global Justice has helped countless individuals survive the transition from ordinary human to super-being."

David and Patricia looked at each other uncertainly. "Then...why haven't we heard of them? Or you?" the protective father asked.

"Because we relocate them to places where they can start their lives over. Most of them become superheroes," he explained, and pressed a button on the VCR remote. On the TV now appeared several photos of people in strange costumes and even stranger appearances.

"All of these individuals acquired unique abilities, not unlike your children, and we helped them adjust to their new lives. Mr. Demenz is a successful lecturer in Germany. Ms. Electra works for the top electronics company in the Czech Republic, just to name a couple," Sheldon explained, pointing to some of the photos.

David and Patricia still looked uncertain. "What...exactly would you do, for our kids?" Patricia asked.

"Teach them to use their powers safely. Train them on when to use them and when to keep them secret. Give them guidance on how to respond to the public. And most importantly..." Sheldon said, "change the public opinion from fear to one of respect."

"How would you do that?" David asked.

Sheldon chuckled. "From what I overheard from the hallway, it sounds like your kids are already on the right track themselves."

The family all looked at each other in confusion.

"What do you mean?" David asked again.

Sheldon knelt down in front of Brendan. "'Team Go,' was it? It's brilliant, actually."

"You...you _want_ our children to be...superheroes?" Patricia asked, her eyes wide.

Brody had jumped next to Brendan, his fists raised in excitement.

"Yes!" he cried. "Please say yes, Mom? Dad?"

"Please?" Brendan added, his eyes almost desperate.

"We can give them every resource they would need. And a team of child heroes in Go City would not only please the public, but it would give hope to this place. You have to admit, it isn't the easiest city to live in," Elizabeth said.

Patricia thought about the few groceries she had been able to afford, and David thought of the forty-plus hours he worked each week so they could afford to eat.

"And of course," Sheldon added, "there would be a bit of money in it for your family. You would have to sign the contract, of course."

David and Patricia looked at each other, and then at the kids. Now their daughter had joined her two brothers and had placed the babies on the bed, who crawled toward their parents. Blue, green, purple, and red... There was no denying that a normal life would now be impossible for their children.

"Well...can we read the contract?" David said.

* * *

Drakken shoved his fifth cream and jam-slathered scone into his mouth. "So your parents gave you away to Global Justice?" he asked, wide-eyed.

"Not exactly," Shego said, watching crumbs fall from his mouth in disgust. "I mean...we still lived with them. For a few years. But..."

She looked away suddenly, her face contorting in pain.

Drakken stopped chewing as he saw the look on Shego's face. "But...what?" he asked, after swallowing the mouthful.

Shego grit her teeth and clenched her fists.

"Shego?"

Eyes closed, her voice finally sounded in a low hiss. "Global Justice...ruined..._everything_."

Drakken leaned forward nervously. "How?"

"They were always there! They never let us alone. They took us to school, and picked us up, and if we tried to do..._anything_ on our own, they told us oh no, it's not safe. Some crazed lunatic who doesn't like superheroes might attack you. And we'd say, but _we're_ the ones with powers, we could just stop them. But then the public would turn against us, they said. We were trapped!"

Drakken frowned. "Oh..."

Shego continued, eyes tightly closed and fists still clenched. "They taught us to fight... They took us to every battle. They made sure the media was watching whenever we defeated a crook, whether it was a common mugger or some weird costumed freak like we were."

Drakken fidgeted, unsure now that the story had become painful for Shego.

"But you...you didn't stay with them forever, right? I mean, you had Go Tower—"

"Global Justice _built_ Go Tower! Why do you think it has so much faulty technology?"

"Ah, I...I see."

"We were their...their poster-children. We brought them recognition around the world. And they manipulated us into the perfect instrument of propaganda for their so-called non-profit."

"But...your brothers are still heroes, aren't they? They're not...associated with Global Justice anymore, right?" he asked, shaking his head.

Shego's eyes snapped open. She bit her lip, and he watched as she seemed to fight against the threat of tears.

He backpedaled immediately. "Shego? I'm sorry. You don't—"

Without a word, she stood and ran from the kitchen, leaving him in silence.

Drakken had never seen her face look like that before. What could have happened in her past, that she reacted like that?


	3. Shadows come and darken your heart

_A/N: Warnings: mild violence, drunkenness, depiction of suicide._

_Also - this fic will be a total of 12 chapters, each with unique titles, and will be updated daily. Sometimes more frequently than that. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 3: Shadows come and darken your heart**

"Shego!" a familiar, gleeful voice sounded from behind her.

The young, green-skinned sixteen-year-old bombshell turned to see her best friend Donna dodging backpacks and jerseys as she ran toward her through the halls of the high school.

Of course, Donna was the real bombshell, Shego thought as she watched the heads of the boys turn. She had been since middle school. And even before that, in their last year of elementary school when Donna had...developed, boys and girls alike had started wanting her in their circles.

Shego was glad that amid all the chaos of her life, she had at least been able to go to the same school as her best friend.

"Shego, are you coming to the game tonight?" her exuberant friend asked when she finally reached her.

"Eh... I dunno..." she said with a forced half-smile, glancing away.

"Come on! We're debuting our new routine tonight!"

Shego wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn't. Who could know? If her life had been different, she might have wanted to be a cheerleader too.

"I'll try," Shego said, completing the smile.

"Hey! Donna!"

Shego looked away quickly to hide the grimace that immediately came over her face at the sound of her brother's voice.

"Hi Hego," Donna said with a giggle.

"Puh-lease..." Shego said under her breath.

Hego leaned against the lockers and leaned down over the two women. "I'm coming to the game tonight. I'll see you there?"

Donna giggled. "Of course, silly! We're debuting the new routine."

"Then I'll be in the front row, watching you," he said with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Shego rolled her eyes, but neither noticed.

"You coming, Sis'?"

Shego shrugged noncommittally. "I guess so."

"Great!" Hego said, giving both girls side-hugs.

The trio walked through the halls of the school side by side, the crowds ahead parting for them. Shego wondered why Hego and Donna never seemed to notice.

"And, uh...if you're not doing anything after the game," Hego continued, looking slightly less-confident for the first time. "Maybe we could all go for ice cream?"

"That sounds fun," Donna said, her bright giggle giving way to a slight blush.

Shego rolled her eyes again, but inwardly she wasn't too unhappy. Donna could do a lot worse than her brother. Namely, any of the other guys in the high school. Which was why Shego had never had a boyfriend.

"Great!" Hego said, his jovial smile returning. "Then I'll see you tonight!"

Donna stopped and waved a shy goodbye as Hego and Shego exited through the double doors at the front of the high school.

"You ever gonna get the courage to ask her on a _real_ date?" Shego asked with a smirk.

Hego dropped his arm from around her, blushing. "Well, this, uh...this is a real date. Isn't it?"

"Not with me along, it isn't," Shego said.

Hego looked a little worried then.

"Do you think she knows I like her?" he said quietly.

Shego laughed. "Hego, _everyone_ knows you like her. There are bets going around on when you two will officially get together."

Hego blushed. "Oh."

"Hey, let me drive this time!" Shego said, running ahead of him when she caught sight of their red convertible in the parking lot.

"Eh..." Hego held the keys up, and then looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. "You know Mego will be jealous."

"You know he only has a permit. Now gimme!" she said, lunging for the keys.

He slipped around her and into the driver's seat. "Maybe tonight, okay Sis'? I mean...what if you mess up, and GJ sees you? They might take the car back."

"Grr!" she growled, sliding into the passenger seat.

"Where is Mego, anyway?"

Shego looked around at the rest of the departing teenagers, avoiding eye contact wherever possible. "Over there," she said, spotting his purple hair next to the flagpole. He was chatting it up with what appeared to be two freshman girls. "Ugh, let's just go get him, he'll never leave that captive audience."

Hego chuckled and started the car.

* * *

Shego brushed her long hair with a slow, smooth rhythm and studied the motion in the mirror. If the light hit her hair just right, it had a green shimmer. But it really was still black. She wondered not for the first time why her hair hadn't changed color the way her brothers' hair had. And why only hers and Mego's skin had changed color. But all of their eyes had changed color.

She sighed, adjusting her headband and fluffing her bangs before leaning forward toward the mirror to study her makeup. After touching up her mascara she glanced over at the clock. It was 5:55pm. Hego had said they would leave at 6:00pm.

She stepped back from the mirror so she could see her skirt and smoothed it down. She couldn't believe it, but for once...it seemed like she would actually get to do something that normal teenagers do. Other than homework.

A brief knock at the door announced Hego's arrival. "Time to go, Sis'!" he called.

"Coming!" she said, grabbing her purse and hurrying to the door. Despite herself, a smile started to emerge on her features. It might actually be fun to watch Donna cheer, and Hego drool, and then be entertained by his attempts to say flirty things over ice cream.

That last thought caused her to chuckle as she ran down the stairs of their family's apartment building. Hego may have grown into a hunk—Global Justice's weight room having a lot to do with that—but he was still clueless when it came to girls.

She reached the car park and opened the passenger door of their car, only to find Mego sitting there looking giddy.

"Hey, Sis'!"

She blinked at him. "What are you doing here?"

"I invited those two frosh girls to the game tonight," he said, grinning.

She rolled her eyes as she slid into the back seat. "Yeah? So what happens if you actually like one of them?"

"Huh?" he said, turning around in the seat to look at her as Hego started the engine.

"What about the other girl? They're probably friends, right?"

"Uh..."

She chuckled. "You aren't going to get either of them. They'll pick each other before they pick a guy. And if they are willing to stab a friend in the back for a guy, then they're not worth it."

She noticed Hego was looking at her through the rearview mirror now too, curious.

"You've got a lot to learn about girls, Mego."

The purple skinned teen frowned deeply and slumped down in the seat with a harrumph. Shego shook her head with a grin.

Just then, a chorus of beeps in a catchy jingle sounded from all three of their wrist watches.

Hego gasped. "Trouble!"

"Awww, man!" Mego whined, sinking lower in the seat.

Shego didn't say a word, but her heart sank. She knew it had been too good to be true.

"Dr. Director, this is Team Go. How can we be of assistance?" Hego said into the wrist communicator.

A screen flashed on in the car's dash, and the face of Betty Director appeared on the small, static-covered box.

_"A new threat has arrived in Go City,"_ she said.

"Whatever it is, Team Go is ready for it!" Hego said.

Shego rolled her eyes.

_"A new villain calling himself Aviarius is attacking downtown with a giant condor."_

Hego gasped. "He could damage historic architecture, not mention putting civilians at risk of injury by falling guano."

That drew a chuckle out of Mego, but Shego was the one now slumping in her seat. She had actually been looking forward to the game, and ice cream afterward. Even if Hego _was_ going to be fumbling over himself making passes at Donna the whole time.

"Hego...what if you guys handle this one on your own?" she said.

"What?" her brothers said in unison, turning to look at her in shock.

"Yeah. And I'll cover for you at the game, and...I'll see you there later when you're done?"

Mego frowned at her. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Yeah," Hego added. "Team Go fights as one!" he said, raising a fist triumphantly.

"Ugh," Shego said, burying her face in her hands.

Hego had turned the car around and pulled up next to the curb at the apartment complex. The twins, already dressed and masked, were bouncing under the street light waiting for him to stop.

"All right, hop in Wego!"

"Yay!" the twins squealed in excitement as they climbed into the back.

Shego buckled them into their booster seats, checking that the straps were extra secure. She knew better than to argue about five-year-olds fighting crime, since they had started when they were two. But since their last birthday Global Justice had trusted the twins to go on missions with their teenage siblings without chaperones.

Shego was still livid about it. But Hego and Mego never seemed to see the problem.

_"Sis', they were practically born with their powers,"_ Hego always said. _"They know how to use them better than we do. They're perfectly safe!"_

"Ready to suit up?" Hego called back to her, giving her an encouraging thumbs up.

She rolled her eyes and nodded. Hego pressed a control on the dash and the car transformed, laying all their seats down like something out of the Fearless Ferret. In less than a minute they wore skin-tight Power Scout knockoffs in matching patterns of black and their signature colors, with black domino masks. Except for Shego, who had refused to wear a mask. She said that since they were superheroes growing up in the public eye that masks were redundant, given their alien appearance.

"Team Go is ready for action!" Hego said as the car returned them to their proper upright seating.

"Oy," Shego said, slumping down as soon as her seat locked into place. So much for cheer routines and awkward ice cream dates.

* * *

The so-called Aviarius was standing on the edge of a balcony screaming something, and the condor was swooping down towards terrified civilians.

Team Go stood on the sidewalk looking up at him. Hego and Mego were frowning, faces set in determination. Shego looked bored, with a hand on her hip. And Wego were bouncing excitedly in front of her.

"We're missing Donna cheering for this?" Shego said, looking up at Hego in annoyance.

She got a lot of satisfaction out of the way he hesitated.

"Can we go get him, Hego? Can we?" the tiny twins begged in unison.

"Not yet," he said, kneeling with a grin and patting each of their heads. "First, we need a plan."

"Oy," Shego said. "Okay, here's what we'll do. Hego, you throw us up there. Mego, you get in that weirdo's face and once he's safely away from the edge, restrain him. I'll take down the bird."

"What do we do?" Wego asked her.

She looked down at their excited, chubby faces framed by curly red locks. She missed their hazel eyes though. She missed everyone's hazel eyes, including her own. But she couldn't say no to their smiles.

"Okay, you surround the guy so he can't escape while Mego distracts him."

"Yay!" the twins cried and began dancing around.

"Now wait," Mego said, "that's a dumb plan. _I_ should take down the bird. I can just grow as big as a skyscraper and grab it."

Shego rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but _I_ can't exactly go shooting that idiot. I might hurt him."

"Shego!" Hego exclaimed, trying and failing to cover the twins' ears. "Don't use the s-word!"

She frowned and crossed her arms. "What else do you want me to call it? I aim, I fire, things get destroyed."

"It's useful when we have to fight giant robots," Mego said with a smirk.

"That happened once," Hego said.

"Ugh!" Shego said, throwing up her hands. They were starting to draw a gawking crowd, as they always did, and if they didn't act soon people were going to start talking. And that was the last thing she needed. "Look, just do my plan. C'mon!" she said impatiently.

Hego blinked at her intensity, but opened his arms. Mego rolled his eyes and picked up the twins. And a moment later the four younger siblings were launched upward, surrounded by a blue aura. Shego watched as Mego adjusted his angle until he was aimed at the tall man on the balcony. She could see now that he was dressed in the guise of a bird, and a lousy guise at that.

The strange man noticed them then, and his eyes widened as Mego landed in front of him and smoothly set the twins down, not missing a beat as he ran forward and shrank down until he was nearly invisible.

"What!?" the bird-man cried, looking around for the purple man who had vanished. It was his undoing as instantly Wego multiplied and surrounded him, the copies beginning to climb him with wild giggles.

"Over here, bird-brain!" Mego chirped, tickling his ear.

"Wha-? Where!?" Aviarius cried, scrabbling at the side of his head.

Shego couldn't help but chuckle. They _were_ good at what they did.

She turned her attention to the condor as it glided beneath her and spread her arms and legs to slow her fall. She timed it perfectly so she landed on its back and gripped tightly to its feathers. The bird reacted to her presence by pulling up out of the glide sharply, jarring her. But she grit her teeth and held on as the bird let out a cry of distress.

From where she was, nearly ten stories up, the crowd on the streets below were indistinguishable from one another—just blank faces—but the cheers they sent up as Team Go fought for them were exhilarating. She had to admit, she did enjoy the worship.

She ignited her glow where she gripped the bird's feathers and in a few moments, it was aflame. Cruel, she knew Hego would say, but it was efficient. The bird started to fall as it panicked, and Shego grinned as she held on.

"Shego!" he heard the expected complaint come up at her from below. She looked past the feathers and saw her blue-haired brother frowning in disapproval. He leapt up, his super strength carrying him far higher than a normal human could jump, and caught the falling condor. He held it with one hand and began beating out the flames with the other. "Shego, this is a living thing! You can't just set it on fire!"

"Why not? It stopped it," she said with a smirk. He growled in frustration and she laughed. The best part about what they did was the chance to annoy her brothers.

He landed effortlessly on on his feet, the condor still struggling in panic. Shego reached up and focused her glow over the bird's head. In an instant, it passed out from the pressure.

"Ah," Hego grunted as he set the bird down. "Thanks."

"I just want to get back to school," she said, studying her nails. They hadn't been damaged thankfully.

"How are Mego and Wego doing?" he asked, looking up to the balcony.

Three waving hands, two red and one purple, signaled the victory of their younger brothers.

"They got the guy. Can we give him to the cops and go already?"

"Well, we also have to make sure this bird gets safely to Animal Control. Aren't condors endangered?"

"Ugh!" Shego threw up her hands. "Global Justice can do all that! I want to do normal teenage stuff for once. Please Hego?"

Her brother's face twisted in indecision, and she sidled up to him.

"Donna will be disappointed if you're not there," she said with a smirk.

Hego blushed. "Ah, well. Okay. As soon as we get Wego back home."

Shego's face bloomed into an actual smile. And she waved at the crowds this time when they finally climbed back into their car, meeting their eyes.

Shego happily played with the twins throughout the drive, only half-listening as Hego debriefed with Dr. Betty Director.

_"Yes, Animal Control is there now,"_ she was saying. _"I still don't understand though why you didn't wait for them."_

"Well," Hego said, blushing, "there's a basketball game tonight. And there's this girl on the cheer squad..."

_"Oh, I see,"_ Betty said with a knowing smile. _"But Hego, what if the bird had gotten loose? What if the criminal had escaped? As heroes you always have to think of the greater good first. You have a responsibility that is greater than yourself."_

Shego glanced up and noticed her brother's smile faltering. She took off her seat belt and leaned forward so Dr. Director could see her face on the screen.

"We'll make it up with extra training this weekend, 'kay?" she said with fake sweetness.

_"Yes, you will,"_ Betty said. Shego's grin fell away. _"And we'll be going over the new security measures of Go Tower."_

Mego sat forward, and Hego's face brightened again. "It's finished?"

_"Yes,"_ Betty smiled. _"In the middle of Go Lake, Go Tower will be a symbol of good for the entire city. You five are really making a difference."_

"Yes!" Mego said, giving a fist pump.

_"And we'll show you the vehicle launch bay, and your new living quarters."_

"Wait, wait, hold up one sec—_living quarters?_" Shego asked.

_"Yes,"_ Betty said, _"as superheroes you must reside in your own heroic hideout."_

"Sure, Sis'," Hego said, "it's just like the Fearless Ferret."

Shego grit her teeth and leaned toward his ear. "That's a TV show, Hego," she said under her breath.

"What about our parents?" Mego asked.

_"We've already explained it to them,"_ Betty said, _"and they understand that the older you get, the more responsibilities you'll have. But you can still visit them on your free time. Now get sleep, you have school tomorrow."_

The screen fizzled out and went dark at the same moment Hego parked the car. He turned off the ignition and they all blinked forward into the darkness.

"Is she serious? _Visit_ them?" Shego said.

"Well...it does make sense. We have a public image to maintain, after all," Hego reasoned.

Shego looked out the window at an illuminated billboard of the five of them, striking a heroic pose, their expressions daring evil to approach Go City. Of course, the phone number on the billboard just went to Global Justice. And somewhere in every phone call was a paycheck to the secret organization, she knew. Of course, all of their needs were paid for too. But she and her brothers never saw any of the money, and neither did her parents based on the way they still slaved at the same jobs five days a week that they had had before the comet struck.

"I'm looking forward to that vehicle launch bay she mentioned," Mego said, "maybe I'll be allowed to drive one of their super vehicles without a license."

"But, even the twins?" Shego said, ignoring her purple brother. "They're only five! She can't mean that they'll leave Mom and Dad to live in some...tower in the middle of the lake!"

"Leave Mom and Dad?" the young twins piped up anxiously.

"Well..." Hego said, now starting to look worried.

"Mom and Dad couldn't have agreed to this," Shego said, frowning. "Something's not right."

Mego looked between Shego and his younger brothers, and soon his face mirrored their worried expressions. "Yeah...Shego's right, Bro'. And...I don't really want to leave Mom and Dad. We never see them as it is!"

"Right. I mean, 'see them on our free time'? We get called away from our 'free time' practically every day!" Shego said, throwing her hands up.

"All right, all right," Hego said. "First we'll talk to Mom and Dad, and then all of us will tell Dr. Director it's too much. At least for the twins."

Shego looked at the two red-haired, red-eyed boys who were watching and listening to their older siblings in confusion.

"It's okay Alex. Don't worry Dylan," she whispered to them as she undid the buckles of their booster seats. She had to be quiet or Hego would get on her case for using their real names. But everyone had started calling them by only their aliases so young, she was concerned they would forget that the way the world saw them wasn't their true identity. "We're a family first," she said, leading them out of the car.

They trudged up the stairs of the apartment building—still in costume, but the neighbors were long used to it—until they reached their room on the fourth floor.

"Mom? Dad?" Hego said upon entering, taking off his domino mask.

There was no response from either parent, and Shego frowned as the twins immediately set to playing with their toys, unconcerned with the costumes and masks.

"Mom? We have to talk to you about GJ's plans for the tower," she called, peeling off her gloves.

The light from their parents' room came on, and their dad staggered through the door.

"Dad?" she said, eyes wide. His eyes were glassy, his clothing was unkempt, and he smelled of alcohol.

"Dad?" Hego said, blinking in disbelief. "Are you...are you drunk?"

Their dad looked at the three of them standing there in turn, then at the twins, and then wordlessly stumbled past them and out the front door.

"Dad!" Hego called, following after their father.

Shego watched them go and then headed into their parents' room.

"Mom? Why is Dad—"

She stopped short and choked on her words. And then she screamed.

"What?" Mego called, running into the room and bumping into her. His eyes went wide.

Before them their mother was hanging by the neck from the ceiling fan, dead by her own hand.


	4. Where you can leave your doubts

_A/N: Warnings this chapter: brief mention of death/suicide/alcohol. Implied sex._

* * *

**Chapter 4: If that's the only place where you can leave your doubts**

Drakken tapped lightly on the door to Shego's room for the second time that day, although less time had passed this time. The first time was longer because he'd been baking scones. This time it was a simple strawberries and cream parfait. He was also prepared with strawberry ice cream, and then vanilla ice cream for root beer floats as back ups in case she was in the mood for something different.

"Shego?" he called.

"Go away!" she called from somewhere inside.

"I just wanted to apologize for...whatever it is that I said," Drakken continued.

"Apology accepted. Now go away!"

"I...also made you something," he said.

There was a pause. And then, "What? Something else?"

"Strawberries and cream parfait," he said.

A few moments passed, and then the door opened. She eyed him suspiciously.

"Was there a sale on strawberries, or...did you know they're my favorite?" she asked.

"Um... Well, I...pay attention," he said with a nervous grin. He would never tell her that he had reached out to her brothers months ago, hoping to get some hints on how to woo her. Thankfully, the twins had been able to give him some advice. The purple one had just laughed and the blue one threatened him.

Shego didn't look convinced, but she took the tray from him and closed the door.

Drakken blinked. That...wasn't exactly what he'd been going for, but it was a start.

He nearly jumped when the door suddenly opened again.

"Oh, come in," she said, rolling her eyes.

He smiled shyly and followed her inside.

These were her new rooms—the upgrade he had promised her after they had accepted their newfound status as world-heroes. It was part of how he was convincing her to go along with the ruse until his new world-domination plans could be realized. In the meantime, it suited him perfectly to pander to the United Nations and anyone else who called. Especially if they had money they were willing to spend on his innovations.

It was during this self-enforced exile from the world of villainy that he had decided to unlock the part of himself he'd sworn he'd never give a thought to. The part of him that wanted Shego as more than a sidekick and friend.

Now that he was paying attention to her in a way that he never had before, he was suddenly seeing her laziness and chronic bad attitude instead as a fight against loneliness. And he should know, familiar with the latter as he was.

Her new room was larger than his, when taking the walk-in closet and en suite bathroom into account. It was also much more modern, having been recently renovated. His own room had been built back when he first bought the lair. But Shego's room had only slightly different decor than the rest of the lair, which he found interesting.

The upholstery, for example, and bedspread were still red like everything else he had brought into the cave. But she had added a white coffee table, vanity, and a few throw pillows. He was surprised they weren't black or green.

"Sit down," Shego beckoned him, settling comfortably into one of the red-cushioned arm chairs.

Drakken fidgeted nervously as he sat in the chair opposite, watching as she spooned some of the strawberries and cream into her mouth.

"Mmm..." she purred, closing her eyes in delight. Drakken looked away, clearing his throat. It suddenly seemed warmer in the room.

"Dr. D..." she said, looking up at him with a rare smile. "If you're gonna keep this up throughout the whole 'play good' charade, it just might be worth it."

"Ah, well," he said shyly, "you're welcome?"

She blinked at him. "Yeah...thanks," she said.

He watched her nervously as she ate. He wasn't sure what to do when she wasn't saying anything. But then...

"My father drank himself to death."

He sat forward. "Wh-what?"

"After my mother hung herself," she continued, "because Global Justice was going to move all of us, including the five-year-old twins, into Go Tower. Without them."

Drakken didn't know what to say. He wasn't a stranger to violence, but he wasn't really used to people talking about certain things so...bluntly. And emotionlessly.

"That...stupid contract they had signed. It basically gave us all up. They just didn't know it at the time. And we were too young and...blinded by it all to understand. We should have realized when they were still working forty hours a week and didn't see any money from GJ. But we were kids! We only cared about ourselves."

Drakken fidgeted nervously as Shego paused to take a bite of the dessert. "Oh."

She narrowed her eyes in scrutiny. "Don't feel sorry for me, Doc. I'm exactly where I want to be. It just...took a long time to get here."

"Ah, okay...good," he said, slowly sitting back again, though he was still tense.

"I had this...fantasy that things might be normal for us someday," she said, waving her spoon around. "But we were outcasts. We didn't have any friends. Well, just one who I'd known before the comet. I lost track of her when GJ took us out of public school, after our parents died. Hego had a crush on her, of course. And Mego was a skirt-chaser too. Men..." she scoffed.

Drakken glanced away nervously.

"We were GJ's dream come true. Kids with super powers who would blindly follow them. They never saw us as anything more. And neither did anyone else in Go City. I had to get out. But not before I got my brothers out of their contract..."

* * *

"But Shego!" whined the twins, chasing after her as she hurried to her car.

"I'll be back, sheesh," she said, putting on her sunglasses and adjusting her headband. "It's just a weekend to check out some colleges. You can handle things without me for a couple of days. Maybe..." she added under her breath.

"Be sure it is just the weekend," Hego admonished, following her out. "We're a team."

"Yeah, yeah," she said, waving her hand. "I'll be back on Monday morning."

"You know it's not really appropriate for a young woman to be out on her own," Hego said worriedly.

Shego turned toward him with a smirk, igniting one of her hands. "I think I can handle myself."

Hego rolled his eyes. "Say bye to Mego for me," she said.

The twins ran forward and hugged her around her legs. She squeezed them both, and when they had released her she smoothed her short, teal skirt.

"You know, if you _do_ find a college you like—"

"_Bye_, Hego," she said, rolling her eyes and hopping over the door into the convertible. And moments later, she roared out of Go Tower's vehicle bay and across the invisible bridge toward the city.

She smirked at all the faces that turned as she slowly cruised the streets, and every now and then she lifted a hand to wave at them. If her plan was going to work, she would need public support.

Go City University was just around the next corner. She passed it by and continued on to a more important destination. Two blocks later, she pulled into a parking lot with several small office suites. And after hopping out of the car she headed straight for the office on the corner of Mr. William Scott, attorney at law.

When she pushed the door open a bell rang, announcing her entrance. The front room was empty because, as she had learned, the young lawyer had only recently passed the bar and couldn't afford a secretary yet. But he soon emerged from his real office, and when he saw her his face bloomed into a smile.

"Shego! Wonderful to see you again," he said, clasping her hand between both of his in a warm handshake.

She smiled demurely, despite herself. "So where are we at?" she asked, straight to business.

The lawyer's brows rose in amusement, and then he gestured with his head back toward his office. She followed him in.

"We're looking great!" he said, his grin broadening as soon as the door was closed. "As soon as you turn eighteen, you can walk right out of the Global Justice contract. And your older brother can already. Why do you suppose he hasn't?"

Shego rolled her eyes. "'Cause he's too dumb to realize we're all their prisoners. Hey, why do you think they haven't tried to sell him on a new contract?"

Scott sat down behind his desk. "Probably because they know _you_ would get wise to their scheme," he said admiringly. "They're probably hoping to keep this going until all three of you turn eighteen, and then get you all to sign a new contract together."

"Yeah, and they're egocentric enough to do it, too..." she scoffed, folding her arms. "What about the custody part of it?"

"Well, I have all the papers ready for your brother if you want to bring him in on this. Or if you want to wait until you turn eighteen, we can try it that way. In any case, we won't be able to keep that one out of court. So you may want to wait until all three of you are eighteen, or GJ may try something with...?"

"Mego," she supplied.

"Yes," he nodded. "If you make a move for custody of the twins, they may try to make his life miserable while he's still a minor."

Shego set her forehead in one of her hands and shook her head. "I don't know if I can wait two years, Mr. Scott."

The lawyer stood again and stepped around to the front of his desk and leaned back against it. "You said you were going to go away to college. You don't think it will be easier then?"

"I dunno," she shrugged, her expression growing more worried by the second. "They may try to make things worse when I refuse to go on every mission. Or make things worse for the twins..."

She shook her head and closed her eyes tightly. If only she had stood up for them sooner. If only she hadn't been so complacent—'for the good of the team,' as Hego said. Maybe their parents would still be alive. Maybe she'd have someone..._anyone_, she could trust.

"I'm sure you'll make the right decision," Scott's voice broke into her thoughts. She looked up to find him standing much closer. "You're smart, savvy, and you love your family. And no matter which route you decide to go, I'll be here for you all."

Shego swallowed back the tears that had begun forming in her eyes. "What do you think I...we should do, Mr. Scott?"

The young lawyer put his hands in his pockets and adopted an expression of deep thought. Shego recognized that some of it was put on, and wondered why.

"You should wait until all three of you are eighteen. That way, your two oldest brothers will be free no matter what, and you'll have both of them on your side to fight for custody of the twins. The courts will be more favorable to you if there are three providers."

"Hm. Now I just have to convince my brothers to go to college," she said, crossing her arms in worry. "They think we'll be heroes forever. But they forget that everything—literally, everything—that we have, technically belongs to Global Justice," she said in disgust.

"Perhaps you'll inspire them once they see you making a difference in society without your powers," the lawyer said, smiling down at her.

She looked up and noticed his brown eyes for the first time. And the brightness of his smile, and the strength of his jaw. She felt something within her chest flutter as he gazed at her.

"We're a bunch of freaks," she protested. "What else can we ever be?"

The young lawyer shifted his weight to his other foot and shrugged casually. "It's not what you look like on the outside. Hey, look at me! I'm barely out of law school and I'm going to win you a case against one of the biggest private corporations in the world."

Shego chuckled and looked away. "Yeah, I guess that's true."

"So. What else are you doing today?"

She blinked at him, surprised by the question. "...I'm meeting with the admissions counselor at Go City University."

"Have time for lunch before you go?"

"Um..." she glanced down at her watch, feeling that odd flutter in her chest again. "Yes, I guess so?"

"Great! How about sandwiches at the deli across the street, my treat? I want to hear what you'll be studying once you get in."

Shego blinked in shock as he placed his hands on her shoulders, turning her toward the door. Why on earth did her chest feel like that?

"Well, I don't know that they'll let me in. I haven't even graduated high school yet."

"What school wouldn't want a renowned superhero?" he asked as they entered the front room.

She turned on him then, the flutter in her chest instantly replaced with anger.

"I don't want to get into college because of my reputation!" she said, glowering at him. "I want to get in because I've earned it!"

He backed off, lifting his hands in surrender. "Whoa, of course you do. And you will. I wasn't suggesting you wouldn't. I just meant...you'll bring your fighting spirit with you, wherever you go. People know _you_, Shego. That's one benefit Global Justice has given you, at least?"

She crossed her arms, eyeing him skeptically.

"And any school would jump at the chance of having a person of your character in their ranks."

"Sure," she said flatly, turning back toward the door. "And you know? I don't have time for lunch after all. Maybe some other time."

"I'll look forward to it," William Scott said with a smile, waving goodbye as she hopped back into the convertible. "Until next time!"

As Shego backtracked to the university, she thought about the lawyer's words. For all the hope he had given her for herself and her brothers, he was dead wrong about one thing: no one knew her character.

* * *

The young, sandy-haired, brown-eyed lawyer asked her to lunch again at their next meeting. And this time, she went with him.

That night, when Team Go took out a villain who'd named himself 'The Giraffe'—he was over seven feet tall—she disobeyed Hego's orders and hit the man point-blank with her glow. His stupid costume was only a little singed, she'd argued. But her brother had not been happy.

William Scott asked her to coffee after their next meeting, and again she attended. He asked her all about her declared major, now that Go City University had accepted her. And she was happy to tell him. Goodness knows her brothers weren't interested. They were still protesting her decision to pursue higher education.

Later that week when Team Go encountered a fascinating villain from somewhere in Europe, a woman calling herself Electronique, Shego had collapsed the roof of a condemned building upon the villain to stun her. Even Mego was upset this time—worried that the roof could have fallen on _him_ of course. But Shego had argued that clearly this lady had some type of electric superpower and could withstand the force. And she had.

When Global Justice took her away, Shego found herself feeling...disappointed. She had wanted to ask the older woman about her powers, how she had acquired them, and how she had arrived where she was in her life.

Some months later, Billy Scott took her to dinner to celebrate both her high school graduation and her eighteenth birthday. She told him all about how her brother Hego ranted on and on about 'the greater good' and how she would be breaking up the team by going to college. She suggested moving the custody fight up, but he advised against it. She took his recommendation.

Soon after, Team Go defeated a woman calling herself Saltine. Shego had no end of fun mocking her name and her ridiculous salt powers throughout the fight, and later mocking Hego, whom the villainess had flirted with heavily as she tried to evade them.

"Come on, Bro', you're nineteen now. Live a little," she said later back in Go Tower.

"Shego, I will not compromise my morals for anything or anyone," he insisted. But the deep flush to his cheeks gave Shego a great deal of satisfaction in knowing her brother was human too. She couldn't tell him though, about the young man who had started to make her cheeks flush green every time she saw him.

Billy took her to dinner again on the eve of her first day in college. This time it was to an exclusive restaurant. She was recognized everywhere of course, but in this place people didn't stare. Except for Billy, who stared into her eyes. And she stared back into his. And when he said he had a new idea for the contract that could get her away from Global Justice sooner, without affecting Mego and the twins as minors, and would she like to look at it right away, she jumped at the chance.

After a twenty minute car ride she realized that he had meant look at the paperwork in his apartment, not his office. And soon after, she realized he had never intended to go over the contract at all. If the changes he had talked about even existed. But that flutter in her chest had been growing for months, until now it was uncontrollable. Every time she saw Billy it came over her, sometimes rendering her speechless, other times causing her to be weak at the knees.

She found it annoying that even as a superhero, she was subject to the weaknesses of human biology. But when he kissed her in front of his fireplace that night she decided she didn't care about her weaknesses, or about his lies about the contract. She didn't care about them during their second kiss either, or the third, or during everything that came after.

When she returned to Go Tower late that night, the flutter had been replaced by a different feeling—a strange mixture of rightness and of wrongness, which she thought suited her just fine. She wished then for a call from Global Justice, so she could get out and destroy something. They hated when she did that of course, since it raised their insurance rates, but she could have cared less. Because the more time passed, the more the wrongness took over the rightness.

She realized that she had missed something when Billy didn't call her the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after that. Usually he was calling her incessantly, updating her on his progress...though, really, there was never that much to update. But always included in his calls were an invitation to lunch or coffee or dinner that she had come to enjoy, not just because of his special attention to her, but for the chance to be honest about her life in a way that she couldn't be with her brothers.

Finally after a week had passed, she called him.

When he answered she found her chest fluttering and constricting all at once at the sound of his voice. "Hi Billy," she said.

"Oh, hello Shego," his voice sounded through the receiver.

She breathed a sigh of relief. He sounded like his usual self. Perhaps slightly distracted.

"I...was wondering if you had any updates for me, about the case?" she asked.

"No, nothing new. I'll call you when I have something."

"Oh...okay," she said.

He hung up.

She clutched the receiver tightly as tears began to well in her eyes as finally she understood.

She'd been used. Manipulated. Objectified.

She could just imagine him bragging to his friends about deflowering Team Go's tough girl, the one who didn't take anyone's nonsense and who wasn't afraid to do whatever it took to get the job done.

She was humiliated. And because she was who she was—a superhero, and an island—she couldn't tell anyone. She was all alone.


	5. Only tell me that you still want me here

_A/N: No warnings this chapter._

* * *

**Chapter 5: Only tell me that you still want me here**

"I'll kill him," Drakken said, his fingers digging into the upholstery of the chair's arms.

Startled, Shego looked up from where she was cleaning the last bits of whipped cream from the dish with her fingers. She grinned in amusement.

"It was over ten years ago, Doc. I already gave him what he deserves. Besides, I don't need you to defend my honor," she chuckled.

Drakken blushed and cowed slightly, wondering at her nonchalance about the whole thing. He was also...quite surprised that she had told him.

"What did you do to him?"

"Well, first I held him to his contract with me. He tried to deny its legality, saying I had only been a minor when I first approached him and couldn't enter into a contract. But then I threatened to expose his...methods...to the Illinois state bar. And I had the resources to do it through GJ, too."

"He was threatened by that?"

She smirked. "I might have also burned down his garage...and blown up his car."

"Ah..." Drakken chuckled, feeling a return to normalcy. "So he continued with your contract?"

"Eventually. A lot of other things happened... But after Mego turned eighteen, I filed for custody of the twins. None of them understood, but I still wasn't ready to tell them that I wanted us to turn on Global Justice. Hego was _sooo_ into all of it. And Mego enjoyed the perks. Plus, they did have good training. Dr. Director is an expert in psychological manipulation."

"Which one, ah, the girl twin or the boy twin?" Drakken asked.

"Betty. Her brother had left by that point and started WEE."

"Mmm..." Drakken grumbled. Gemini's organization wasn't usually a problem for him, but every now and then they reared their ugly heads. He also didn't like how callous Gemini was. Henchmen were people too, after all."

A thought suddenly struck him. "Shego... When you decided to be evil, why didn't you join Gemini?"

Shego shuddered in disgust. "And associate myself with one of the people who ruined my life? Uh-uh, no thanks," she said, crossing her arms.

She had set the empty dessert dish aside and propped her feet up on the ottoman, crossing them at the ankles.

"Mm, that's fair," Drakken shrugged. "So...when _did_ you tell your brothers about your plans to get all of you out?"

Shego sighed. "Well...I tried when I filed for custody of the twins. But it didn't go exactly as I'd planned, after the whole perverted lawyer thing..."

* * *

Shego held on to her headband as she ran through the quad, late for her Developmental Psychology class. It had been a mission, as always. It was short thankfully—just Aviarius, who had escaped from prison for the third time—but her professors never seemed to understand.

On the one hand, she was glad they didn't give her special treatment. But on the other hand, she wanted to graduate. Couldn't they make an exception when she had just saved downtown from a mutant ostrich?

She vaulted over a stone wall, gripping tightly to her textbooks, and increased her pace. Two minutes. She had two minutes. She could make it.

And then the carillon chimed the hour.

"Argh, you're two minutes fast! My watch is perfect, it's quartz!" she shouted at nothing as she increased her sprint.

"Bet you didn't earn it!" a voice sounded from somewhere off to her right, followed by a chorus of laughter.

She barely gave the hecklers a glance as she continued onward. She would show them. She would show everyone. She would get her degree and then get a job because she deserved it, not because she was 'Shego'.

A minute later she skidded to a stop outside her classroom, ruining her heels, and took a second to catch her breath before walking in. Every head turned when she did, but that was nothing new.

"Glad you could join us, Shego," the professor said, used to her tardiness at this point in the semester.

"I'm sorry, Professor. It was—"

"I'm sure we'll all see it on the evening news, hm?" he interrupted her.

"...Yes," she said, shuffling into her seat.

"Then let's discuss potential topics for your term papers," he addressed the class, turning back to the chalkboard.

Shego continued catching her breath silently and began taking notes. The term paper was worth the majority of her grade in this class, and she knew she could turn out a well-researched topic. It should make up for every assignment she'd missed throughout the semester.

Now if only she could find a way to catch up in her other classes...

* * *

Shego yawned as she walked into Go Tower that night, dropping her coat and book bag on the floor. She kicked her ruined heels off and strode to her green armchair. Hego had insisted that even their living quarters be themed around their respective colors, after GJ had suggested it of course—good for their image when they held press conferences there. The perk was that she always had her own stuff that her brothers stayed away from, including her own bathroom. The hero life wasn't all that bad.

"Shego!" her oldest brother's voice sounded from behind her.

But the bad did keep showing up.

"What?" she whined.

"Why are you back so late?" Hego confronted her, his arms crossed in front of his broad chest.

"Uh, because research takes time. Doy. Not that you'd know..."

"You missed another mission," he continued, towering over her. "Didn't you hear the alert?"

"I did," she said, studying her fingernails. Next time she went out, she would have to get a manicure.

"And you ignored it?" he said incredulously.

She sat forward and glowered at him. "If I don't pass this class, it'll set me back a year. It's only offered in spring semester!"

"If you keep missing missions, people are going to start talking," Mego's voice caused her to turn as the lanky purple teen entered the room. "And you know what happens when people start gossipping. They'll believe anything."

"Mego, there are people on this team besides you," Shego said. "And...speaking of that," she said, seeing her opportunity, "I need to talk to you both."

Hego's ire suddenly vanished, his instinct as family protector taking over. Shego hoped it would work in her favor.

"Since we're all over eighteen now, I think we need to file for custody of the twins."

"What?" Mego said.

"What do you mean, Sis'?" Hego said, sitting down across from her.

Shego took a deep breath. Something told her not to tell them her plans about leaving Global Justice just yet. It would probably be harder to convince them about the twins without that, but...she had to trust her gut.

"I don't want them growing up without choices," she said. "They were barely one when the comet hit. This," she gestured around them, "is the only life they've ever known."

"What's wrong with this?" Hego asked.

Shego bit back her frustration. "It's not real life! We're just...playing the game you started when we were kids, except with real superpowers and real villains."

Hego blinked at her. Mego joined his brother, arms crossed and a confused frown on his face.

"But we have everything?" the purple-skinned boy said.

"Yes..." Shego said through clenched teeth, "but we still have to do whatever GJ tells us. And don't you think the twins deserve freedom? That we all do?"

"Freedom...? Sis', we do whatever we want. GJ only calls us when there's trouble," Hego reasoned, not understanding.

She closed her eyes, not wanting to get into an argument. Right now, this was about the twins.

"Except...that if we didn't have GJ, we wouldn't have anything. _Everything_ we have belongs to them," she said, her voice rising in pitch. "I want Dylan and Alex to have a chance for the life _they_ want, not the life they're _told_ they have to have!"

Hego's eyes suddenly narrowed. "Their name is Wego."

She stood up in frustration. "Brendan!"

"Hey, c'mon Sis', cut it out," Mego said, plopping into his chair. "Every time you start the name thing, you and Hego stay mad at each other for days."

"The only way to truly have secret identities is to only have _one_ identity," Hego reminded her, parroting Dr. Director's words of old.

Shego rolled her eyes. "Okay. Fine. I want...the Wegos," she couldn't bring herself to refer to both of them in the singular, "to be able to choose their own lives. But they've had every move dictated to them by GJ since they were babies!"

"What's wrong with GJ?" Hego asked in confusion.

In her temper, Shego forgot about her plan to hold back about their so-called sponsor. "Because they're just using us! We're nothing but a commodity to them!"

"How can you say that, after the way Dr. Director took us in when Mom and Dad..." Hego said, trailing off.

Shego frowned deeply, rejecting the tears that tried to fill her eyes. "Look, I'm doing this with or without you. So will you file for custody with me?"

Hego and Mego exchanged looks, both now looking decidedly unhappy after the reminder of the horrible memory they all shared.

"Sis', I just don't get it," Hego said.

Whether it was stubbornness or frustration with her, Shego didn't know. She just knew that once again, her brothers had let her down. Shego glowered at them both and left the room without a word.

* * *

"All right, now concentrate," Betty Director said from behind Shego's right shoulder.

Shego held her breath as she let the energy of her glow build within her hands. But as the energy built, so did her anger. Anger with Betty, for the way she and Global Justice had been using her family. Anger with her brothers for not understanding. Anger with her professors for coming down so hard on her.

The green glow escaped her hands and traveled nearly at light speed across the training room and hit the titanium wall. When the smoke dissipated, a blackened scar was left. But the wall was intact.

Betty sighed, and Shego turned to see the woman frowning with her hands on her hips. "Better, but you'll never destroy it if you keep letting your emotions take control."

Shego looked down. She had learned so much about her powers and knew there were abilities she had yet to unlock—including destroying the indestructible—but she always came up against the metaphorical wall of her anger.

Why wasn't it like that when she was still a preteen, and her emotions had helped her to focus and accomplish her tasks? When had everything changed?

"Give it one more try, then we'll call it a day," Betty said.

"Why do I need to learn to destroy titanium anyway," Shego stalled. She knew she wouldn't be able to do it, and she didn't want to fail again. And for some reason she couldn't explain, pleasing Betty mattered to her. The thought caused her to cringe in self-loathing.

"Oh, you never know..." Betty answered, "aliens from another world with advanced technology may invade one day, and Team Go might be the only ones who can stop them."

Shego shook her head with a smirk. "Not likely."

"But still, it could be useful. Try again."

Shego took a few slow breaths to calm herself, and began charging her glow again. She tried to put every single thought out of her mind until there was nothing but the glow. For a moment it seemed to work, and then...

In an instant, the glow fizzled away to nothing.

"Huh? What happened?" Shego asked, confused.

Betty chuckled. "You can't disconnect yourself from _all_ emotion, Shego. Certainly some of the comet power is tied to it. You all recognized it from the very beginning."

"True..." Shego said, crossing her arms and frowning. She hated failure.

"Why don't we grab lunch?" Betty said, putting a friendly arm around her.

"Sure," Shego sighed, still wondering about her powers. How much emotion was too much, and how much was too little?

"I've been wanting to ask you about something..." Betty continued, drawing Shego's attention.

"Oh?"

"You've missed the last four missions with your brothers."

Shego held her breath but acted nonchalant, studying her nails. "Yeah, Hego already got on my case."

Betty blinked. "Doesn't it matter to you?"

"The four of them have the more useful powers anyway, and I'm trying to get a degree," she said, crossing her arms and looking away.

Betty seemed to hesitate, and her face was unreadable. But then she smiled and patted Shego's shoulder. "And I'll be so proud when you do."

"Heh. Thanks," Shego said, suddenly feeling uneasy.

"So how are your classes going? Do you like your professors?"

Shego talked to Betty that day the way she used to talk to Billy Scott—the way she wished she could talk to her brothers. The way she had tried to talk to her parents before they died, except that they were always too tired or away at work.

When the lunch was over and she hurried over to the university campus for a late afternoon class, Shego decided it was time to make a friend. She couldn't confide in Betty all while planning to get her family out from under Global Justice's hand. It just felt...wrong.

But where to find a friend, she wondered, as she walked the sidewalks of the spacious grounds toward her Psychology of Crime class. None of the other students had shown any interest in her except to tease her, or to ask for her autograph, the former being the more common. And her professors didn't seem to trust her either. Not that she was interested in any type of involvement with someone in authority again. She had learned her lesson the last time.

So...where was she going to find someone?

She paused on the steps of the psychology building and looked around. There were familiar faces...but only vaguely. She realized she never paid attention to her classmates, and with a hint of guilt realized that was the first step. She was so used to being treated as an outsider, that she had forgotten to give people a chance.

Maybe in college, now that she was an adult, things would be different.


	6. Mirages in your sight

_A/N: No warnings this chapter._

_This one is quite short, but the next one more than makes up for it. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 6: Mirages in your sight**

"Excuse me," Shego said softly to the girl next to her.

The petite brunette in the other desk looked at her wide-eyed, as if she'd never expected the green-skinned girl to speak to her.

"Can I borrow a pencil?" Shego asked sweetly. "I seem to have forgotten mine."

Wordlessly, and still wide-eyed, the girl handed Shego her pencil.

"Thanks!" Shego said with far too much sugar. "I'm Shego, what's your name?"

"Sarah..." the other girl replied, still seemingly in shock at being spoken to by the superhero. Now, the two girls at the desks in front and back of Sarah had turned to watch the exchange with equal shock.

"I really owe you," Shego said, turning back to her own desk. "If I miss any more of these notes I dunno _what_ I'll do!"

She forced herself to focus on copying down the professor's writing from the chalkboard, aware that the girls' eyes were still on her. Maybe...just maybe, they'd buy the act.

And then maybe, Shego could have a real friend.

* * *

The next week, she asked Amanda-the girl in front of Sarah-how to spell 'amygdala,' even though she already knew. And the week after that, she bemoaned her struggles of studying with constantly noisy brothers in the 'house' to Jane.

After class in the fourth week, they invited her to their study group.

* * *

"So here's what I'm thinking of for my date with Jeff," Sarah said, folding back a magazine page and holding it up in front of her.

Amanda, Jane, and Shego leaned in around Sarah as they walked across the quad to view the dress in _Humans_ magazine.

"It's gorgeous!" Jane squealed.

"Sexy," added Amanda.

Sarah blushed and playfully slapped Amanda's shoulder. "Stop it! We're not even at second base, yet."

Shego grinned in semi-feigned interest, always keeping quiet when the conversation turned to boys. She had extremely limited experience in that department—all of it bad—and the last thing she wanted was to say something that revealed too much about herself.

"Well, maybe if you buy that dress, you will be!" Amanda continued teasing her friend.

Sarah blushed deeper and this time shoved her friend's shoulder. "Anyway Jane, do you wanna come over Thursday for mani's and pedi's with us? I want everything to be perfect on Friday. It'll be our last date before Jeff graduates."

Shego's ears perked up. _Nails?_

"Sure!" Jane replied excitedly.

In unison, all of the girls' heads slowly turned to Shego, who held her breath expectantly. They had never invited her to one of their apartments before.

"Would you like to come too?" Sarah asked after a moment.

Shego bit her lip, and then squealed in delight. "I'd love to! Can I bring my polish? I just got a new shade that would be _perfect_ on you, Jane!"

The girls gaped at her. Shego knew that was the most genuine she had ever been with anyone in college, and she found herself blushing after the outburst.

"Wow, I've never seen you so excited before!" Sarah said with a grin. "Of course you can bring your polish!"

"Hey, you blush green," Jane said, staring at her cheeks. Shego blushed deeper. "So...um, what color is your blood?"

Shego looked down at her hands. "It's...kind of teal."

"So are you an...an alien?" Amanda asked with wide eyes.

"How do your powers work?" Sarah asked.

Shego looked up at them with a shy smile.

And just like that, she began again.

* * *

"So next Thursday at my place, and you can tell us all about your big date!" Jane said, "And then...oh."

The girls looked at Shego wonderingly.

The mani and pedi party was also a sleepover, Shego had discovered upon arrival. She had never been to a sleepover before, so she sat there in her teal and pink pajamas bent over Amanda's toes as she put the finishing coat on, worrying about how to get her hands on a pillow and sleeping bag. She had lied and told the girls they were in her car, and she would get them later. Along with her toothbrush and other necessities. At least she had brought pajamas, since that was always how she painted her nails. Maybe she could sneak out the bathroom window...

The silence caused her to look up and she blinked dumbly as the other girls stared.

"What?"

"Um...well, next week we're going to Jane's. And...we're trying to plan for the week after."

Shego looked at them for several seconds. And then her eyes widened as understanding dawned. They wanted to go to _her_ place for a sleepover?

The giddiness that filled her was replaced almost instantly with dread. She couldn't bring anyone to Go Tower. There were hardly even any GJ staff that worked there. It really was a fortress of solitude for her family.

"So...how about it?" Sarah asked, looking unsure.

Shego swallowed and put on a bright smile. "Sure! Two weeks, my apartment. I'll rent the movies."

"Apartment?"

"Sure," Shego lied. "You didn't think I went back to Go Tower every night? Psh."

"Ohh..." Amanda said, and they all looked at her with that look as if she were a foreign creature again. But it always resolved into them seeing her as more normal than they had before.

Amanda's subsequent giggle was proof. "Well, of course not! You certainly can't bring boyfriends home with your brothers around."

Shego fought the urge to roll her eyes as she capped the bottle of top coat and scooted away from Amanda. In the weeks she'd been getting to know them, it became clear that that girl's thoughts all revolved around sex.

"Ooooh!" Sarah and Jane said, scooting closer to her. "Do you have a boyfriend, Shego?" Jane continued.

"Not right now," Shego said. "I'm halfway through my degree. I'll never finish in four years if I have to take care of _another_ guy." She found it very easy to tell the truth in that regard. But, the fewer and fewer missions she went on, she realized she was seeing less and less of her family.

Sarah yawned. "Well, I need my beauty sleep so I can look my best for Jeff tomorrow."

Shego gulped.

"You gonna go get your things now?" Jane asked her.

"Sure," Shego said, standing. Her heart began racing in panic. What was she going to do?

Just then, her wrist communicator jingled.

The girls all gasped. "Is that...?"

For once, Shego was glad to be pulled away by GJ. She pressed the button on the state-of-the-art device and listened as the call came in.

_"Team Go, this is Dr. Director. The alarm at Go City Central Bank has just been tripped."_

_"Team Go is ready for action!"_ Hego's voice sounded through the communicator in response.

"That's right!" Shego added.

_"Sis'! You mean you're—?"_

Shego closed the link, cutting him off.

"Who is that woman, Doctor...Director?" Sarah asked.

"I'll explain later," Shego lied with a grin. "Right now, duty calls!"

"Ooooh!" the girls all squealed as she grabbed her purse and headed for the door.

"See you in class!" she said casually as closed the door behind her.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she descended the apartment building's stairs. But as she reached the convertible, she realized she didn't actually want to go on the mission with her brothers. Maybe she could just...go back to the Tower, get her things, and come back to the sleepover? But then the girls would ask about the mission.

She decided she'd better go. She'd been promising the girls a real mission story for awhile anyway, and this one would be perfect.

She hoped they remembered to bring her nail polish back to class the next day.


	7. If your hopes scatter like dust

_A/N: No warnings this chapter. This one's a little longer._

* * *

**Chapter 7: If your hopes scatter like the dust across your track**

"Please Mrs. Bentley, I _need_ the graveyard shift!" Shego begged, hands clasped in front of her.

"Shh!" the librarian said, frowning at her disapprovingly.

"You know who I am," Shego continued more quietly. "I have to have my regular hours available. Come on, when's the last time you had someone _ask_ you for a shift that would keep them up all night?"

"Yesterday."

Shego blinked in surprise.

"I understand that you need the job dear, but I already have two people on overnight sorting. What I need is someone during the day."

Shego took a deep breath to calm her rising anger. "Fine. What have you got?"

In the next several minutes, Shego organized a work schedule with the university's librarian, and insisted on starting that day. She'd be able to afford an apartment to bring her girlfriends to in no time.

"Okay dear, now just sign the contract here."

Shego picked up the pen, a satisfied smile on her face, and began scanning the document. And then when she saw her salary, she nearly choked.

"Six...six seventy-five an hour?" she said incredulously.

"Yes...we're a dollar above state minimum wage. What did you think you'd be making?" Mrs. Bentley asked her in confusion.

Her lower lip trembling, Shego signed the contract. There was no way she could have an apartment in two weeks. She'd have to make up some excuse.

She kept making excuses for the rest of the semester. And the more she made, the easier it was to come up with them.

* * *

Shego pulled aside the curtain of her new apartment's window as she heard a car pull up. When she saw her friends getting out of the white sedan she hurried away and surveyed the room to be sure everything was perfect. Popcorn was hot in the bowl on the coffee table, the movie was in the VCR fast-forwarded past the previews, there were plenty of sodas on ice, and all of her nail polish was lined up on the card table.

And this time, she had a sleeping bag and pillow.

Everything was perfect!

A minute later a knock at the door caused her heart to skip a beat. It had taken half a year before she could put in a security deposit and the first month's rent, but she'd finally done it. And she'd done it by herself, _without_ Global Justice's help. And now she was having her first sleepover, in her apartment, with her friends.

She couldn't help but smile as she let the last word rest on her thoughts as she poured the melted butter over the popcorn and added more salt.

"Coming!" she sang out, and set the ramekin aside.

She opened the door and stepped aside, a broad grin on her face as Sarah, Amanda, and Jane slowly entered with their bags, gawking.

"I'm so excited you're finally here!" she said, unable to contain her enthusiasm. "I rented 'The Prince Groom' to start, and I also got 'Mindless' for later. And then if we want something scary, 'The Butterfly.'"

Her friends didn't respond, still looking around the room.

"This...is your apartment?" Amanda finally said.

Shego folded her hands in front of her and smiled, shrugging shyly. "Yes!"

"Where's all the...cool hero stuff?" Jane asked.

Shego's smile started to fade. "What?"

"Yeah. Where's all the glitz and glam?" Amanda asked, setting her hands on her hips.

Shego began fidgeting worriedly. "What do you mean?"

"You know," Sarah said, stepping forward to face her. "All the...perks from being a hero."

"Ugh, is this the furniture that came with the apartment?" Amanda said, eyeing the couch judgmentally.

Shego looked at the worn cushions, and then around at the faded wallpaper and the wobbly card table and chairs. She hadn't really noticed the state of the place. All that had mattered was that it was hers.

"What do you mean, 'perks'?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Where's all the bling-bling? The ice, the leather, the cashmere?" Sarah asked in confusion.

Shego's eyes went wide at the same time her heart began to sink. "Wait...you all thought...that I'm _rich_?"

The three girls now stood side by side, all facing her with varying expressions of shock and disillusionment.

"Well, you're a superhero. So yeah," Sarah said.

Shego laughed. A real, genuine _Shego_-laugh.

The three girls took a step back, uneasy.

"We don't get _anything_ for being heroes! We do what we do 'for the greater good'!" she explained in exasperation, running her fingers through her hair and knocking her headband askew in the process.

"Wait, so...you don't get any money...at _all_?" Jane asked.

"Guys, we've got nothing! Okay, c'mere, listen," she said, stepping forward and setting her hands on two of their shoulders to pull them close, grinning. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "There's _no_ such thing as superheroes!"

"But...we've seen your powers," Sarah said in confusion, trying to step back. But Shego had an iron grip on her shoulder.

"Oh, sure, we've got powers. But all the 'bling-bling'? Go Tower, the jet, my car...even our costumes—we're privately funded and under contract. Always have been! If any of us decided to step out of line, we'd lose it all!"

She let go their shoulders, and the girls stepped back in a hurry as Shego's laughter morphed into uncontrollable cackling. One by one, the girls looked at each other solemnly and filed out of the small, dingy apartment. And once they were gone and the door locked behind them, Shego's laughter gave way to sobs.

* * *

GJ had paid through the nose to keep the girls quiet, Shego realized, when she saw them in class again the next week.

Amanda was wearing sparkling diamond earrings, Sarah, a pearl necklace, and Jane a ruby ring. Not the mention their designer purses and clothing.

Shego didn't even try to make eye contact, since apparently all they had ever been interested in was the bling-bling.

She had eaten her crow, apologizing fiercely to Betty for her mistake when she realized the possible ramifications. And then Betty told her about even more which she hadn't considered, showing her she still had much to learn. Why she hadn't thought of it herself, considering her own blackmail scheme, proved just how dangerous having relationships could be.

She was grateful at least that her brothers had been left out of it. The whole thing was humiliating enough without Mego's mocking and Hego's overbearing fake-protectiveness that never came without an 'I told you so'.

Betty had warned her against any further indiscretions, which Shego had had no problem accepting. She knew better than to attempt to make friends again. Real friends, apparently, were just a fairy-tale concept.

But when Betty had suggested that if she didn't clean up her act and start acting like a team member again that GJ may decide to stop paying for her education, she started to worry.

She had two more years to go, and then if she decided to pursue a credential like she had discussed with her counselor, that was at least one more year.

Weeks later, Shego sat atop Go Tower as the sun rose, the wind in her face as she considered her situation again. She couldn't just...be everything that GJ wanted her to be. She had to live her own life. Even if Hego and Mego were content to be 'yes men' forever, she wasn't.

And the twins deserved the chance to make the decision for themselves.

She buried her face in her hands and groaned.

All the missed missions and now the indiscretion with her classmates had put in her in hot water with GJ. But she'd put off filing for custody of the twins for far longer than she'd originally intended. Trying to balance her classes, the missions she _was_ interested in, and her ridiculous job had distracted her.

How could she talk Betty into signing the papers now?

She sat back with a sigh and watched the colors of the sky change. First purple, then pink and orange, and finally gold erupted on the edges of the clouds as the sun's rays over the horizon.

Unrestrained power, Shego thought. She wondered what she'd be capable of if she had the freedom to let loose like that.

She smirked. Maybe the answer was to do exactly what she had always wanted, and stop trying to fit into GJ's box.

Standing up on the edge of the tower, she straightened her headband with resolve. She had a new plan.

* * *

"Betty," Shego said, strolling into the tower in full costume a week later. "I need your help with something."

Dr. Betty Director turned from the monitor she had been studying to grin at her pupil. "What do you need?"

"I need you to sign these papers," Shego said with a smile, thrusting a folder into her boss's chest.

Betty blinked in surprise, and then opened the folder and began to read.

"Custody papers?"

"Yes," Shego said confidently. "Now that Mego is eighteen, it just seems right. We can raise the twins."

Betty looked between the green-skinned heroine and the papers in confusion. "But...what would change?"

"Probably nothing," Shego said, studying her nails. "But...we're grown up now. And we want the responsibility for taking care of our brothers, officially."

Betty continued reading, flipping through the papers. "These only have your name on them."

Shego ran her fingers through her hair, holding onto her headband with the other hand to keep it in place. This was where things could go awry.

"Yeah...well, me being the 'woman' and all, Hego and Mego didn't really see the point in their names being on there," she lied. She found it odd to call herself a woman, but, at nearly twenty years old she supposed she was.

"_Hego_ didn't want his name on here?" Betty asked.

Shego noted the skeptical look that was beginning to take residence in her eyes.

"Like you said, it won't really change much. So he was fine with it."

Shego locked eyes with the other woman as they studied each other for several seconds until finally Betty's eyes darkened.

"You're holding your breath."

Caught, Shego frowned.

"What's this really about? Why would you want custody?"

"In...case something bad happens," she lied.

"You've always trusted Global Justice before," Betty pointed out.

"_No,_" Shego said, dropping the facade, "we haven't. We just didn't have any choice after our parents..." She realized she was clenching her fists, and took a deep breath to relax. "Look, just sign the papers. Or else I'll take this to court."

Betty's eyes widened. "Shego, I don't understand. We've always only wanted what's best for your family."

Shego's fists clenched again. "What would have been _best_ for us, would have been for you to leave us alone to be raised by our parents. Like _normal_ kids!" she said, barely controlling her temper.

"I'm still devastated by their loss," Betty said. Shego scoffed, but the older woman continued, "but this doesn't make any sense. You have your degree to worry about. You don't want any added burden right now."

The woman's acting was superb, Shego thought, but she wasn't going to buy it this time.

"Sign the papers."

Betty raised an eyebrow, her concern vanishing, and studied the papers again. "You know these have to be signed in the presence of a judge."

"Since when do you go by the book in everything?"

Betty crossed her arms. "If you want to be taken seriously out there, you're going to have to learn to follow the world's rules. You know, maybe you're right. Perhaps we have restricted you and your brothers too much, if you think you can just...use force to get what you want."

"I said I'll take this to court if you don't sign."

Betty set the folder down on the desk behind her. "All right. I'm interested to see you try."

"You really don't want that," Shego said with a smirk.

"No really, I want to see how you approach this, Kid," Betty said with a smirk of her own.

Shego felt her blood boil at the demeaning appellation, but instead of responding she turned around and faced the hallway.

"Oh, Billy!" she called in a sing-song voice.

A moment later, the frightened face of William Scott, attorney-at-law peered into the room from his hiding place around the corner.

Betty's jaw dropped in shock. "You...you brought an outsider into the Tower?"

Shego chuckled. "It's just Billy," she said as the frightened man approached. "He won't give away any of our secrets, will you Billy-boy?" she said, pinching his cheek when he reached her side.

The few other GJ officers in the room who thus far had ignored the argument between the two women now angrily flanked their boss, glaring at the green-skinned superhero and the withering man next to her.

"That's that lawyer you were dating," Betty said.

Shego was startled, but only for a moment. It made sense that GJ would have had her followed, or bugged, or whatever. But...if they knew she'd been going to see him, why hadn't they tried to interfere...?

"Dating. Manipulating..." Shego said casually. "It's all the same to me. Now lay it out for them, Billy!"

Sweat was dripping from the man's brow, and he shakily held up the folders that were balanced between his hands, the paperwork nearly twelve inches thick in total.

"M-Miss Shego and I have compiled years' worth of evidence to show the court that Global Justice are unfit custodians," the man stuttered. "In fact, if this does go to court, the government will probably want to investigate your entire corporation."

Betty frowned and snatched at the folders, but Shego stepped in between her and the lawyer, hands on her hips. The man jumped back with a frightened yelp.

Betty looked between the heroine's smug face and that of the trembling man who was peering over her shoulder.

"Shego..." Betty said, her eyes widening, "what did you _do_ to him?"

Shego chuckled and turned around to approach the lawyer. He jumped when she set a hand on his shoulder, and his eyes went wide with fright when she tucked her cheek up against his and ruffled his hair.

"Me? Do something to Billy? What do you take me for, Betty?" she said innocently.

Dr. Director exchanged nervous looks with the other three officers next to her.

"Now, sign!" Shego said through clenched teeth, her false grin having dropped instantly.

Betty turned around to where Shego was pointing at the papers, and started flipping to the ones with the tabs indicating where her signature was needed.

"If we're so beneath the law," the older woman said with a frown, signing her name on the first page, "does this really matter?"

Shego thought about her pathetic apartment, and her even more pathetic job sorting books. But then she thought about the path to the future—a college degree and a credential, and with them the chance for freedom. If her family were ever going to be part of normal society, she _would_ have to play by their rules. And if something were ever to happen one day that pitted her against Global Justice, she had to know that her family wasn't a liability.

"It matters. Now finish signing!"

"Sis'?" a voice sounded from behind her, and Shego groaned. She turned around, her fists clenched at her sides. "What's going on?" Hego asked. Mego and the twins were with him.

Shego took a deep breath. "Remember I told you I was getting custody of the twins? Betty's signing the papers now," she said, turning back to make sure of it.

The director was in fact continuing to flip the pages and put her signature on the appropriate lines. Shego felt herself calming down, and sighed in relief. Maybe it would be okay after all.

"Oh," Hego said. "Well, okay. I still don't see what it changes, though."

Shego held her tongue, waiting until the signing was complete. Then she'd give the twins the good news.

"Who's this?" Mego asked, looking the sweaty lawyer up and down judgmentally.

"My lawyer," Shego explained, not taking her eyes off of Betty. She was finishing the last page.

When she had set the pen down, Shego snatched the folder and checked every single page for herself. Then she handed it to Scott, who also checked.

"So...what does custody mean, exactly?" Hego asked.

Shego rolled her eyes.

"It means she's responsible for them now," Betty explained. "For their food, clothing, shelter, education, safety... Everything a parent would be responsible for."

Shego glanced at Scott, who nervously nodded an affirmative. The heroine felt her heart leap in joy. She had finally done it!

"Well...how are you going to do that, Sis'?" Hego asked.

Shego knelt down in front of the twins. "Boys...you don't have to be heroes anymore, if you don't want to," she said gently.

Above her, Hego and Mego gasped.

"Not be heroes?" both seven-year-olds exclaimed.

"You can live normal lives, like normal kids," Shego said, setting her hands on their shoulders and giving them a squeeze.

"But...why wouldn't we be heroes?" one asked.

"Yeah, I like being a hero," the other said.

Both were staring at her in wide-eyed confusion, and Shego took a measured breath.

"I said if you _want_ to stop being heroes, you can. You can do whatever you want!"

"Like go to outer space?" one said in excitement.

"Or buy a flying car?" the other added.

Shego smiled wanly. "Well...maybe someday, but—"

"Just how _will_ they do whatever they want, Shego?" Betty broke in from behind her. Her tone was just innocent enough that her older brothers didn't recognize the threat lying beneath.

"Well...after they finish school, they can—"

"Aw, we hate school," they said together.

Shego grit her teeth. "But everyone goes to school. It's what kids do."

"Hego and Mego don't go to school anymore," one of the twins protested.

Shego closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "That's because they're stupid," she said under her breath. Aloud, she said, "Well, they're grown up so they can decide to do that. But they won't be able to do what they want if they don't go to school," she finished, looking up at her older brothers pointedly.

Mego was frowning at her, and Hego looked confused.

"But we're already doing what we want," Hego said.

"Yeah!" Mego agreed in annoyance.

"Yeah!" the twins shouted, their smiles returning.

"But...Dylan, Alex—"

"_Don't_ call them that!" Hego broke in fiercely, looking something other than confused for the first time.

Shego stood up and went toe-to-toe with him. "They need to develop individual identities _Brendan_, apart from each other and from Team Go," she hissed.

"Under our continued tutelage, they will," Betty said with a sweet smile.

Shego turned to her in disbelief, and then back to her two older brothers, who were nodding their agreement.

"How can you— Can't you see...? Rragh!" Shego shouted, throwing her hands up.

"Hey, Shego?" one of the twins said, and she looked down into their curious eyes.

"Yes?" she sighed.

"What's your other name?"

Shego blinked once, and then again. And then snatching all the folders away from Scott, she ran out of the room, leaving her confused brothers and a confident Dr. Director in her wake.

She took the elevator to the roof and hopped in the jet, dropping the folders onto Hego's seat. But instead of beginning the start-up sequence, she flipped around so she could get her head under the dash and began working her fingers between the wires.

She was glad she had paid attention all those years ago when GJ taught them the specifications of the jet, and she was doubly glad she had paid attention to the systems they hadn't been told about.

It took her less than a minute to disable the tracking system, and once she was sure no one could find her, she started up the striking white and Team Go-colored jet and got out of U.S. air space as quickly as she could.

With all of her brothers having been so indoctrinated and led into blindness by GJ, and since she knew William Scott would probably never be seen in Go City again, she knew it was up to her to protect her family and one day get them all their freedom.

Hours later she ended up in Greece and landed the jet far from civilization and out of reach of any type of tracking technology. She used her jet pack (green, of course) and flew under the radar until she reached a city. And once there she registered a safety deposit box under a name that she hadn't heard spoken since the week the comet struck, and that the twins were too young to ever remember hearing. She put all of the evidence against Global Justice safely inside. And then exhausted, she began wandering the streets of the foreign country, simply glad to be away.

She had never been to Greece before. And she had never been anywhere where she'd had any freedom before. Her trips to other countries had all been with the Team, on a mission. And when the threat had been neutralized, they always piled back into the jet and flew straight back to the Tower.

Now, she looked around in awe at the vendors selling their wares and at the stunning architecture.

It only lasted a few minutes of course, until she realized that everyone was staring at her. She was in full costume and she knew that GJ had made sure that Team Go were internationally on call, even though their base of operations was Go City.

She sighed loudly and began to smile and wave, putting on the usual show, and headed out of town. She supposed that the salon she had spotted with their advertisement for nail art painted on the window would have to wait until she returned next year to pay the bill on the safety deposit box.

And besides, if she stayed away for too long GJ would find some way to track the jet. It was a risk she couldn't take.

She started up her jet pack and flew out of town, the cheers of the crowd echoing behind her.

* * *

"What _is_ your real name?" Drakken asked, and then flinched when she frowned at him. "Ah, heh...I've...always wondered. Hm."

"None of your business, that's what," she answered, closing her eyes. She had closed them halfway through the telling this time, and he noticed that her speech had begun to slur and slow.

"Aw, come on," he said playfully. "You know _my_ real name."

She opened one eye and studied him. "So you'd like me to start calling you Drew, huh?"

He shrank back, his lip curling into a sneer at the sound of it.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," she said with a yawn. "Doc, I don't want to remember the life associated with that name anymore than you do yours."

"But...your life...was good, when you used your other name. My life was just...heckling, and put-downs, and people thinking I would never amount to anything. Well, I showed them! And I, Dr. Drakken—"

"We present for the People, Exhibit A," Shego cut him off, gesturing lazily to where he now stood, fist raised high and an angry snarl across his face.

He blinked twice, and then sat down sheepishly.

"Listen, Doc... It may have been a good life. But I haven't heard that name since the week the comet fell. I don't even remember who that person was," she lied. "The only person I ever remember being is...Shego," she said with another yawn, this time stretching her arms high above her head. When she let them fall, she drew her legs up into the chair and snuggled back into its depths, closing her eyes fully. "So just...leave it alone..."

Drakken watched her for several moments. Her chest was rising and falling in a slow, rhythmic pattern.

"Shego?" Drakken said nervously.

His green-skinned sidekick was asleep, her hair slowly succumbing to gravity and falling across her features.

Selfishly, he thought about waking her up. More than wanting to know about her powers now, he was desperate to hear how she had turned to evil. She had reason enough already, in his opinion, based on all she had told him so far. And if 'Shego' was the person she had always considered herself to be, then...how did the hero become the villain?

"Shego?" he said a little louder, but she didn't stir.

He rose and took a quiet step toward her. Her head had fallen to the side and was supported by nothing, which he knew from experience would be very painful if she slept that way all night.

He contemplated carrying her to her bed so she could be more comfortable, or waking her so she could walk herself. Both prospects would probably result in pain for him, he realized, and so he sighed and simply turned toward the door.

Maybe, he thought as he looked back at her one more time before turning the lights out, she would still be in a sharing mood the next day.


	8. When you wander off out there

_A/N: No warnings this chapter.  
_

* * *

**Chapter 8: When you wander off out there**

Drakken had just finished laying out a breakfast of eggs, waffles with strawberries, and coffee when Shego emerged the next morning. As he suspected, she was rubbing her neck and her face bore an expression of pain.

She stopped short when she saw the breakfast laid out on the table, and then crossed her arms suspiciously.

"Eh, hehe...good morning," he said nervously, removing his oven mitts and apron and hurriedly sitting down at his place.

After a moment, Shego sat across from him. "You're just doing this so I'll tell you more about my past. Why I even _started_ that, I'll never know," she said, going straight for the coffee.

"N-no, I'm...going to keep doing this," Drakken said, poking at his eggs.

Shego swallowed back the hot liquid and looked at him suspiciously. "Why?"

Drakken fought the blush that crept into his cheeks. "Be-...cause I want to. What's it to you?" he ended with a frown.

Shego blinked, and then smirked in amusement. "You won't hear me complain."

A few minutes passed as they ate in silence, but then after a swallow of coffee Drakken spoke up nervously.

"But, um...I would very much like to hear the rest of your story," he said with a hopeful grin.

"I knew it," Shego frowned, sitting back and crossing her arms.

"Well, I mean...you've already told most of it. Why not finish?"

"And then I became evil, the end," she said, cutting a piece of waffle.

Drakken looked down in disappointment. Hearing her story was completely changing the way he saw her. He had already thought she was the most perfect evil partner a super villain could have. But now he was...impressed with her as a person. Not that he hadn't been already, but now he had even more reason to be.

"Oy," Shego's sigh drew his focus. "Why do you care anyway?" she said tiredly.

Drakken blinked. "Well, it's um...just, uh, well...eh hehe," he finished weakly, grinning shyly. He ran a hand back through his hair. "Oh!" he said, suddenly remembering.

Shego looked at him suspiciously.

"Ah, would you mind...h-helping with the...flower, again?"

Shego rolled her eyes in a big show of annoyance.

Drakken fidgeted uncertainly.

"Well, go get the meds!" she said impatiently.

He jumped at her sudden outburst, and scurried away to get the prescription cream. He also brought back the pill he had been told to take every day, either until the plant mutagen was completely eradicated, or for all eternity. Doctors weren't sure which would come first, since his mutagen was a brand new invention.

"Ah, h-here it is," he said upon returning. He was already blushing as he handed her the tube, and she looked at him in confusion.

"What's with you this morning, Doc?"

Drakken grabbed a bar stool and dragged it over to where Shego sat and pulled his shirt off and removed his ponytail, used to the process of the routine if not the practice.

"Ah, well... T-tell me more about what happened after you got custody of your brothers. That should...help me focus."

"Oh, for the love of...!" Shego cried.

Drakken tensed, sitting down now with his back to her. He thought it best that he couldn't see the anger on her face.

He listened as she put some of the cream on her fingers and then shuddered at the cool sensation as she worked it into the offending breaks in his skin.

"Fine," she said a minute later, and Drakken's brow rose in surprise. "Global Justice started playing them against me..."

* * *

Shego was more determined than ever. She continued working her book-sorting job at the university library, but gave up the apartment to save her money. She'd only wanted the apartment to host friends anyway, and...goodness knew she'd never have any of those.

She got better at making it to all of her classes and finishing her assignments, in part thanks to GJ. They seemed to have embarked on a course of bribery, to keep her younger brothers in line.

One day, it was new jet packs and night vision goggles with heat-seeking tracking built into the display. Of course, all five of them received the upgrade. But she didn't care. Another day it was individualized sky-surfers, which she thought were redundant since they already had jet packs, but what did she know? All this kept her brothers off her back and let her get on with her life when they weren't actively on hero-work.

GJ was also sending them out on more and more dangerous and long-term assignments, which she assumed were an attempt at keeping _her_ interest.

She did her homework on the long flights overseas, and she also did it during her new graveyard shifts when her book-sorting was finished, sleeping less and studying more. It made her even grumpier on missions which Mego and Hego felt it necessary to point out at every opportunity, but still she didn't care. She just had to deal with it all until she got her credential.

She had made up her mind with the help of her guidance counselor and was going to make a start in her career as a psychology teacher. After that, she wasn't sure, but Go City was desperate for qualified teachers the university had told her, and with both a credential and a degree in Child Development, she'd be able to work anywhere after jumping through the appropriate hoops.

The only problem was the same problem she had always had—she was Shego.

Because while she had continued resentfully working for Global Justice, she had let more and more of her personality show through.

To stop fleeing robbers, she shot their car's gas tank with her glow, blowing it. Both criminals had survived, was her argument, when Betty and her brothers questioned her motives.

When the boss of a notorious drug trafficking ring had been captured and refused to give evidence, she tossed him off of a building. She'd caught him before he hit the ground, of course, and he'd been frightened into confessing. They got the information, she'd told Hego, did it really matter how it was acquired?

When Betty, GJ's entire board of directors, and her brothers had called her before them for review one day, telling her to change her methods because the image she was sending to the public was not the image of peace and goodness that Team Go stood for, her response was that she didn't want anything to do with their image.

Hego had been livid.

"What do you mean, you don't want anything to do with our image, Sis'?" Hego asked when the five of them had returned to their living quarters.

Shego dropped into her chair, hanging her legs over one of the arms and picked up her nail file. "Exactly what it sounds like, Bro'," she answered with a smirk.

"Hey, Shego," Mego said, flopping onto their sofa and letting one of his arms hang over the side. "I'm tired of listening to GJ too. But you're not helping things when you blow up expensive property."

"It was just a helicopter, sheesh," she mumbled.

Hego stood over her and put his hands on his hips, frowning down at her. She barely gave him a glance as she began shaping her nails.

The twins ran up and stared at her over the back of the sofa, their wide red eyes a mixture of curiosity and worry.

It was their faces that finally made Shego relent.

"Look, guys...it's not you. It's that we've lived our entire lives doing everything they've told us. Don't you want to...you know, do what _you_ want to do?"

She looked at each of them in turn. The Wegos looked unsure, and Hego still looked mad. But Mego was starting to look worried.

"Why won't you ever think about it?" Shego directed her ire up at Hego. "They control everywhere we go, everyone we talk to, and keep us prisoners in this Tower."

Hego's frown deepened. "Sis', they don't control everything we do."

"Yes, they do!" she set her nail file down and sat up to face him.

"They haven't interfered with you going to college for five years," Hego countered, crossing his arms and raising a skeptical eyebrow.

"Yeah, Hego's got a point," Mego said, sitting up.

Shego rolled her eyes and let out a grunt of disgust. "You have no idea how many arguments I've had with Betty about that. And didn't you say she told you to talk me out of it when I first mentioned applying?" she said, narrowing her eyes at Hego.

"Um, well..." he averted his eyes guiltily.

"See!?" she said. "And why haven't you two gone to college?" she asked, standing and looking between the blue and purple-haired men.

Mego just scoffed and lay back on the sofa. Hego sat down on the coffee table and rested his chin on his fists, pouting.

"Aw come on, Sis'. You know that evil in Go City is rising—"

"According to who, hm? Betty?" Shego asked.

"Well..." Hego said, rubbing the back of his neck.

"I mean, just...just..." she lifted her hands up next to her head in frustration, "think about it. Were there ever costumed freaks running around trying to take over the world when we were kids?"

Hego furrowed his brow in thought.

"Like we'd remember?" Mego said.

"It's always in the news now, why wouldn't it have been then?" she argued.

The Wegos hopped over the back of the sofa, landing on Mego who yelped in annoyance, and then they flanked Hego on the coffee table, looking between their two eldest siblings in earnest.

"_Were_ there lots of bad guys when we were little?" the one on Hego's right asked.

"I can remember some, but it's all really fuzzy," the one on the left added.

"You're just remembering the ones we've fought," Shego explained. "I don't remember there being any bad guys that weren't in comics or TV, until GJ turned us into their...their propaganda machine."

"Sis'..." Hego complained with a sigh, "you keep saying that, but I still don't see what their 'secret motive' is."

Shego frowned. She didn't know yet, either. But someday she would.

But never one to back down, she scoffed at him. "It's probably to get more money. Isn't that everyone's goal?"

"Is that why you're trying to get a job?" Mego asked, sitting up and rubbing his chest and legs where the twins had bounced on him.

"No," Shego growled in frustration, sitting down again, "I want to do more than...than go on these dumb missions for the rest of my life. I want my life to mean something."

"And it doesn't, saving the world?" Hego looked at her incredulously.

She stared back at him, willing him to understand. Maybe it would be, if they were all free. But they weren't and never would be as long as Global Justice was calling all the shots.

"Shego?" the twin on the left said, and she met his eyes. "What did we do before we were heroes?"

She bit her lip, and then opened her arms to them both. They climbed into her lap, nearly knocking the wind out of her—they were ten years old, after all—and hugged them both tightly before shooing them onto the arms of the easy chair. The memories of holding them both close when they were little had come at her fast and hard, and she bit the insides of her cheeks to stop the onset of tears.

"Actually...we played heroes a lot. In our tree house. You two were the civilians who needed to be rescued. It was always Hego's idea," she said, looking up at him in annoyance. But his expression had changed, and now he looked almost sad. Perhaps he missed when they were a real family, too?

"I wanted to be the villain," Mego chimed in. "A mad scientist."

"How much science to you get to learn now, huh?" Shego asked pointedly.

Mego furrowed his brow and frowned.

"You wanted to be a villain?" one of the twins asked incredulously, staring at the purple-skinned brother.

"But villains are evil!" the second twin chimed in.

"Rrgh!" Shego growled, digging her nails into the chair cushion. "Would you listen to them? They're ten and they're so...so blind!"

"Villains _are_ evil, Sis'," Hego added practically.

"Yes, but...but you have to look at each individual objectively. Not every guy who holds up a gas station is trying to topple global economies. Sometimes they're just regular people, down on their luck and trying to feed their kids, like Dad—"

She stopped short as all of her brothers gaped at her.

"What did you say?" Hego asked.

She bit her cheek again, but the tears started to come anyway.

"I didn't mean...I just meant... Rrgh, come on, you _know_ how poor Dad and Mom were? And," she blinked away her tears and took a new tack, "don't you think it's strange how they _both_ still had to work full-time while we were training and going out on missions?"

She'd finally struck a nerve, and her two oldest brothers looked between each other as she crossed her arms with a raised brow, demanding an explanation.

"They had to...make it look like everything was normal..." Hego said mutely.

Shego remembered the line that Sheldon Director had fed them soon after their family had been relocated to the heavily monitored apartment complex just outside of downtown, next to the interstate. They'd all be well-provided for, he'd said, patting each of the sibling's heads in turn.

"Sure, we'd believe anything they told us back then," she said, "we _wanted_ to use our powers. But we're not kids anymore, Brendan."

Hego's blue eyes fixed fiercely upon hers. "Don't call me that!"

"Why not?" she said with a smirk. "Does it remind you of, oh I dunno, _real life!?_"

Hego's large frame seemed to collapse as he frowned sadly, and Shego sighed. She didn't actually want to hurt their feelings.

"Hey...have either of you signed any contracts or...or other paperwork for GJ since you turned eighteen?" she asked with bated breath.

Hego and Mego exchanged confused looks. "No," Mego answered. "Why?"

Shego felt her heart leap within her. Could they actually have a chance...?

"If you haven't, then that means...we could actually leave."

"What?" Hego asked, his brow twisting in confusion.

"I've read the original contract. I had a lawyer look at it, too. As soon as we all turned eighteen, we were in the clear. We don't have to do _anything_ they want anymore! That's why I got custody of the twins," she continued in a rush, "so we could all get out at the same time!"

"Get out of what?" Mego asked.

Shego felt her frustration returning. "Out of...of this! Of a controlled, robotic life! Come on...Brody," she addressed her moodier brother, who looked away in guilt. "Hego," she said, respecting her older brother's wishes, "we can all go back to...being the heroes in the tree house again."

"To do what? Why would we give this up? We're on easy street," Mego said, but then he frowned. "Besides, we don't have...anything else."

Shego grit her teeth and hissed out a reply. "That's why you should both be in college!"

"Hey..." one of the twins said quietly, and Shego took a deep breath to calm herself before meeting the red eyes in answer. "How...did Mom and Dad die? Really?"

Shego sucked in a breath and turned away. Hego and Mego were staring at her in fear, their eyes pleading. They had all agreed back then never to tell the twins, that they wanted them to remember whatever happiness they could about their parents before that day. And by the looks on her two oldest brothers' faces...they actually thought she might go against them in this?

It was Global Justice she hated. Not her family.

"Heartbreak," she said finally, as a tear slipped from her eye.

She stood up and quickly headed for her bedroom.

"Shego, wait!" Hego called after her.

She whirled around to face him, her anger returning. "And if _that_ isn't evidence enough for you that something is wrong here, then I don't know what else to say anymore!"

With that final word, she strode into her room and slammed her door, leaving two teary-eyed boys and two very confused men behind her.


	9. Leaving you with regrets so cold

_A/N: Warnings: discussion of sexual situations._

* * *

**Chapter 9: Leaving you with regrets so cold**

Drakken and Shego were reclined at opposite ends of the sofa in what passed as the living room of the lair, she finger-combing her hair while he fidgeted with the TV remote, pretending to repair it. Her legs were outstretched on the sofa and crossed at the ankles, forcing him to draw his own legs close to him, his chin resting on one knee with the other knee leaning against the back of the sofa.

It was only mid-morning, but outside the lair a thunderstorm raged, and the dark, rain-laden clouds blocked out all of the sunlight, giving the appearance of a gloomy night to the lair.

"And they never believed you," Drakken said, drawing the obvious conclusion.

"Nope..." Shego sighed, drawing out the word. "They stopped listening all together. The only times we communicated was when I went on missions."

"Did...you leave after that?" Drakken asked tentatively, no longer curious for his own sake, but wanting to find some glimmer of hope in her life.

She sighed again. "No, not yet. I still thought I could save them. So I finished my preliminary credential and started teaching so I could get some savings."

"Preliminary...credential?" he asked in confusion.

Shego sighed and straightened up. "Okay, so first you get a bachelor's degree. Something you wouldn't know about," she said. His annoyed frown drew a half-smirk out of her. "Then you do post-graduate work for one year to get a credential, and you student-teach the whole time with a couple of master teachers in different settings to get some experience. _That's_ a whole story in itself..."

"Oh?" Drakken asked.

Shego glared at him, but she appeared to be thinking. Finally, she shrugged and looked out the window into the driving rain. "You remember how I got close to Billy, since I needed someone to talk to?"

"Y-yes?" Drakken said, suddenly feeling a bit sick.

"Well, I got very close to my second master teacher, Mr. Wang. It was getting harder and harder to go on missions with my brothers treating me like I wasn't part of the family anymore, after that night. I guess they'd all decided they just...weren't going to listen to me anymore, or something. I dunno..."

She drew her legs up to her chest and hugged herself tightly. Drakken began fidgeting.

"And he was so helpful, giving me lots of advice on how to relate to the kids. I mean, half of them were girls. Psh, I didn't know anything about girls, all I'd ever had to deal with were boys. I was a better teacher because of him, and he was always so nice. And he never...treated me differently, because of who I was. So I...I talked to him. A lot. And—"

Just then a flash of lighting brightened the lair. But it was the deafening 'CRACK-BOOM' of thunder immediately after that startled them.

Drakken gasped and dove across the sofa and clung to Shego, whimpering in fright. And when the thunder ceased several seconds later, he heard Shego gasp too.

He realized he was sitting in her lap and had his cheek mashed into hers. He let go and with a sheepish look scooted back over to his end of the sofa.

But when he saw her face, something had changed. She was not only blushing green, but she looked distinctly afraid in a way he had never seen her look before.

"I'm sorry," he offered immediately, not understanding what had her so frightened.

She blinked once, then twice, still staring at him with that look. The blush on her cheeks grew, but it was apparently in fury as her eyes slowly narrowed and she bared her teeth at him.

"You..." she said breathlessly, her shoulders heaving. "You're not... I don't need to talk to you," she said, rising and stepping around to the other side of the sofa. "I don't need to talk to anybody. Why should I tell you anything anyway? You're just an idiot who doesn't even know how his own experiments work!" she cried, now running out of the room.

"Shego?" he called after her, jumping up to follow.

"Leave me alone!" she shouted, and he stopped when he saw her turn a corner. Seconds later he heard the door to her room slam shut.

Drakken sighed and hung his head. What had he done this time?

In her room, Shego was pacing back and forth in front of the en suite. Not for the first time she wished that Drakken had built her a real bathroom. Then she would really have somewhere to hide.

Lightning illuminated her room and thunder rolled again, and she closed her eyes against the reminder of that day. It was a day she never wanted to remember...

* * *

"You wanted to talk with me Mr. Wang?" she said with a smile as she walked into the homeroom after school.

This semester she was teaching in a middle school, which she found perfect since the twins were the same age. She really knew how to handle preteens.

"Yes... Sit down, Shego," he said, gesturing to the chair kitty-cornered to his desk. She quickly complied, smoothing her skirt as she sat.

His smile seemed put on. And for the first time since she had started her mentorship under him, Shego felt...less than complete confidence.

He cleared his throat and looked at her, his smile now full. "Was your mission successful?"

"Well..." she looked away guiltily, "we captured a lot of his agents, but Gemini got away again."

Mr. Wang smiled gently. "I'm sure it will be the last time."

Shego enjoyed the confidence he had in her. It was almost enough to make her glad to be working closely with Betty again, seeing as how taking down Gemini was something they could both agree on.

Mr. Wang's smile faded to that facsimile again, and Shego tensed slightly. What was wrong?

"The reason I wanted to talk to you actually, was about your missions," he continued.

"Oh?" Shego said, tucking a stray strand of hair back into her headband.

"Yes... Do you know how many classes they've caused you to miss?"

She did know. "Twelve," she answered guiltily.

"Shego. I'm not your father..." he said, and her eyes snapped back to his, "but you have to start taking this more seriously."

"I do take it seriously!" she protested, but he lifted a hand.

"When you get a job, there won't be another teacher in the room to cover for you if you just...don't show up. Do you realize that you've been gone for more hours than you'll get in sick leave for an entire year?"

Shego blinked. No, she hadn't realized that.

"And you have to write sub plans, and call first, and put it into the call network," he continued, his eyes sympathetic but his voice stern. "Even though you're a superhero, if you want to work in this field you have to treat every day, every class, every _student_ as if they were as important as your missions."

"I will!" she nodded anxiously, her heart pounding.

Mr. Wang shook his head. "Actions will speak louder than words, Shego."

* * *

Shego shook her head to banish the memories as she stared out into the rain. But then through the sound of the droplets beating against the stone, she heard a soft knocking against steel.

"Shego?" Drakken's nervous voice came from outside the door.

She closed her eyes tightly and growled. Would the guy never take a hint?

"Go _away!_" she shouted.

"I just...wanted to say I'm sorry, for whatever I did," he said, louder this time. "And...that's all."

She opened her eyes and stared out the window, waiting for the inevitable request for her to open the door and whatever strawberry creation he had come up with this time. She had to admit, he was good in the kitchen.

But the request didn't come.

After several seconds of silence she went to the door and opened it a crack, expecting to see his silly blue face. But all she saw was the stone wall opposite her door.

She stepped out, looking both ways down the hallway, but he was gone. That wasn't like him.

Curious, she softly stepped back the way she had come, past the kitchen and into the lair's living room. There she found him, back on the sofa and leaning against one of its arms, his cheek resting on his open hand.

"Dr. D?" she asked.

He started, and turned quickly. "Oh! Shego... Whatever I said or did, I'm sorry."

He looked so worked up, and he technically hadn't even done anything. She sighed and went to sit down again.

"Take a chill pill Doc. It's me, not you."

His brow twisted in confusion. "Wh-what?"

She bit the inside of her cheek and glanced away. She wasn't about to explain what had sent her into a panic-that she recognized the pattern happening all over again. The one where she bared her soul to someone, _anyone_ who would listen to her, since despite all her attempts to be independent she apparently still couldn't escape the human need for companionship. And as the pattern went, whenever it was a _man_ she found that companionship in, she...

"I...didn't earn my preliminary credential fairly," she said, picking at the threads of the sofa with her nails.

"What do you mean?" she heard him ask.

"...That last semester of my student teaching, I had started going on more missions with my brothers again. It was W.E.E.," she said, cautioning a glance at him. He frowned in disapproval at the mention of their rival in evil, and she looked back to the sofa threads. "Gemini had built up a substantial organization by that point, and of course, he was targeting his sister. Which also meant Team Go."

"So you fought W.E.E. What's wrong with that?"

"I kept missing classes when I went on the missions. Classes I was supposed to teach," she explained quietly.

"Oh..."

"Mr. Wang gave me an ultimatum one day. He said if I missed any more classes, he wasn't going to recommend me for the credential."

She heard Drakken hold his breath. Somehow...he seemed to know whenever she was about to reveal something about herself that he wouldn't like. Although she didn't understand why it kept surprising him, since they were both evil villains.

"Did you..." she heard Drakken swallow nervously, "did you threaten him?"

"Not at first...because, I knew he wouldn't believe that I would hurt him," she said, pulling threads from the upholstery with her nails. "So I...seduced him," she said quietly, unable to prevent the flood of visual memories that now assaulted her.

Drakken was silent across from her. She glanced up and saw him chewing on his lip, his eyes wide. She looked away again.

"I didn't go...you know, 'all the way' with him. But far enough. So that afterward I was able to blackmail him into recommending me for the preliminary credential. Or else he would lose his job."

She nearly gasped when she felt a tear slide down her cheek. She didn't know at what point she had begun crying.

"It's...the only evil thing I've ever regretted," she said.

"Why?" Drakken asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Because he...he was so wonderful! He actually _cared_ about me doing well, and taught me how to work with all those little brats, and I really admired him, but—" she sniffed, and swallowed down the lump in her throat, "he meant what he'd said. And when I missed another class for a mission, he told me that he was sorry, but he couldn't recommend me. I couldn't let five years go to waste!" she said, digging her nails into the back of the sofa.

The room was silent but for the pounding of the rain. Shego wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as the tears stopped. Finally, she looked at Drakken, who was looking quite sad as he fidgeted with the hem of his t-shirt.

"What's the matter, Doc?" she finally said, her throat still a bit tight.

Her voice startled him, and he blinked rapidly as he looked at her. "N-nothing. So...did you stop Gemini?"

She stared at him. "What do you think?"

"O-oh," he said, looking down sheepishly.

"But after that day...I didn't go on any more missions for three years."

He stared incredulously. "None?"

"I had to take control of my life. And I got my full credential fair and square, no special treatment and no cheating. Three long years of evaluations, ugh!" she groaned, resting her chin on the back of the sofa. "I just...stopped answering their calls."

Drakken sat back against the arm of the sofa on his end, and she looked over at him.

"Did they ever try to find you?"

"Oh, they did find me. One day they even ambushed me while I was teaching. But it was fine, all the kids were excited to see them. And when they asked why I wasn't part of the team anymore, I just told them I was fighting for 'the greater good' in a new way."

* * *

"But teaching, Sis'? Everyone knows teachers don't make any money," Mego said as the family of five sat down to lunch on her break at the delicatessen across from the middle school.

"And you would know this...how?" Shego asked, smoothing her suit skirt as she slid onto the bench out in front of the small restaurant.

Mego looked guilty. "Uh, well, you know..."

Shego looked around at her other brothers and then smirked. "Could it be that a certain Dr. Director told you that, to try to convince me to come back?"

Hego took a big bite of his sub sandwich. "Come on, Sis'," he said, crumbs falling from his mouth, "we're not a family without you."

"And we miss you," the Wegos said in unison, giving her the puppy-dog pout.

She blinked in shock. Sometime during the year she had been living a normal life away from hero work, their voices had changed. What else was she missing?

"I miss you too," she said, "but I...really like what I'm doing."

It was true, she thought, as she took a bite of her salad. She had an apartment, a car, all of her students liked her, and all of her evaluations that year had been great. She was finally, finally free.

"What could you have to teach a bunch of preteens?" Mego scoffed.

Shego frowned. "Uh, maybe to grow up into free thinkers who can live their dreams? Unlike some brainwashed man-children I know..."

"Mego..." Hego said in warning after swallowing another bite of his sub. "Teaching _is_ an excellent profession. Our sister will serve the greater good in a very special way, impacting one young mind at a time."

Shego blinked and looked hopefully at Hego. Was he finally starting to get it?

Hego's lower lip started to tremble as the facade crumbled.

No, no he wasn't.

"But why can't you stay part of the Team, too?" the blue-haired man whined, setting his hands on her shoulders.

"I told you," Shego said, shrugging him off and turning her attention back to her salad. "I'm going to be normal. Anytime you all want to join me, my door is open."

The wrist communicators all jingled then, including Shego's.

"If you don't want to be part of the Team, then why do you still wear that?" Mego asked.

She ignored him.

"Team Go is ready for action!" Hego said into the communicator.

Shego only half-listened to the conversation that followed between her brothers and Dr. Director, munching on her salad. She only realized it was over when her brothers all stood in unison.

"Well, how about it Sis'? One more for old time's sake?"

Mouth full, she shook her head until she had swallowed. "Give Aviarius my regards," she said sweetly.

Her brothers all exchanged looks, and then left. Shego tried to forget the sad looks on their faces as she continued with her lunch.


	10. The sun may blind our eyes

_A/N: We are in the home stretch! Two more chapters to go after this. No warnings this chapter._

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**Chapter 10: The sun may blind our eyes**

"So...if you were a successful teacher, then why did you decide to become evil?" Drakken asked.

Shego was startled out of the memory and looked at him, noting his curious expression.

"It was more of a...discovery, than a decision," she said honestly.

He blinked. "Oh?"

She grinned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. You turned evil for some dumb college revenge and never looked back. Well Doc, some of us were _born_ evil."

He shook his head. "I don't think you were."

She narrowed her eyes at him in challenge, as if to ask, 'What did you say?'

His hands flew to his mouth, and then he held them up and waved at her innocently. "I mean, of course you were born evil! Yes, you were _so_ evil to leave your brothers alone to fail without you. Not a caring bone in your body!"

"Just can it," she said, rolling her eyes and laying her head against the back of the sofa again.

He fidgeted anxiously, staring at her with tightly closed lips as he had wisely taken her advice.

This time without the added fright of the lightning, Shego felt that anxious tightening in her chest as she stared at him.

Why was she still talking? Why hadn't she just stayed in her room? She didn't need a...a...friend, did she? She'd made it for years without anyone once she finally got her teaching job. No brothers, no Betty, and no...eugh, men.

"Why...are you looking at me like that?" Drakken asked.

She blinked rapidly and sat up again. Like what? How had she been looking at him?

"Ugh, just...shut up. Okay, so after I got my preliminary credential I was hired at Go Central Middle School and I left the Tower. Even though I had a job, I had to start living from nothing..."

* * *

Shego eased her rusty car to a stop in the park-and-ride and turned off the ignition. She turned off the lights, including the door and vanity lights, and made sure the doors were locked. Then she turned around until she was kneeling on the seat, and then reached down and felt beneath it for the lever to recline the back. Finding it, she pulled with one hand as she edged her way onto the seat back with her knees, using her body weight to force the broken seat down.

Finally it fell, hitting the back passenger bench with a dull thud. Shego was used to it by now.

Grabbing her pillow and unzipped sleeping bag from the other side of the bench, she stretched out and lay down on the reclined driver's seat and began making herself comfortable. It was only September, but the weather could go from temperate to inhuman in Go City without warning this time of year.

She fell asleep that night to the sounds of traffic, and again for countless nights after as she saved money for an apartment. She had her eye on a place near the interstate overpass, which was the cheapest in the city of course. It was a long commute from the school, but it would be better than sleeping in her car.

The day she was ready to sign the lease, her car wouldn't start. She tried jumping it with the help of someone else at the park-and-ride to no avail. And she had to give up or else be late for work, which was not an option. She was glad at least that sleeping next to the highway was a natural alarm clock, and she was always up early with plenty of extra time before school started.

She walked in her heels four miles to the closest bus station.

After school she got a ride from a coworker back to the lot, but when she arrived she found her car stripped and burglarized. All of her possessions were gone—not that she'd had many—and anything of value that was on the car had been taken.

But she didn't call her brothers.

The money that was supposed to go toward her apartment was spent on another rust-bucket that only lasted a month before it too gave out.

What did a girl have to do to get a decent car in Go City?

Unfortunately...she had a few ideas about that. But she wasn't going to act on them. She was going to show Dr. Director and her brothers that comet-powered super-beings could in fact live normal lives. And that meant doing things by the book.

So Shego spent some nights on park benches, and others in different classrooms of the school once she had figured out the janitor's rotation and was able to avoid him. After the first month she could finally afford a couple of changes of clothes. And after another two months she was able to put the deposit down for her apartment and still had enough money for food for the next two weeks.

Having had everything handed to her by Global Justice, she hadn't really learned anything about practical living. And she feared for the day her brothers may end up tossed aside with no real life skills. If it ever happened, she would be there for them at least. Although the way Hego ate, they'd be on the street again inside of a week.

There had to be a way to get some extra money that didn't make her loathe herself for the method...hadn't there?

As it happened, there was. And it had started fairly innocently.

One day walking through the park on her break she spotted a twenty-dollar bill blowing across the sidewalk. She picked it up and looked around her in every direction. But she was the only person there.

Shrugging, she'd tucked the bill into her purse. It was a windy day in a public park, after all. No one would be coming for it. And that twenty bought her microwave dinner that night, for which she was grateful. She'd become a one meal a day person since separating herself from GJ, and she had to make sure it was lunch, or else her coworkers would start wondering. Her suit skirts were sliding lower and lower on her hips as it was.

The next time, she'd been back at her apartment doing laundry when a small wad of bills fell from her jacket pocket. She stared at the money in confusion until she remembered—three students had paid for their field trip late, and she'd tucked the money into her pocket to give to the secretary later. All the payments for the trip had already been deposited, so there was no rush. Apparently she had forgotten. And no one had noticed, since a week had passed since she'd worn that particular skirt.

That money paid for two dinners, and a rare glass of wine out of a box at the pizza parlor.

The third time was deliberate. She'd forgotten her lunch that day and so was eating at the delicatessen across the street. All the while, a hundred dollar bill and a piece of paper sat tucked into the napkin dispenser at the unoccupied booth opposite her, in plain sight, and yet unnoticed by the deli's staff. After thirty minutes of staring and eating her lunch far faster than she usually did, she looked both ways and then grabbed both the bill and the note, tucking them into her pocket on her way out of the restaurant.

She read the note later and felt a pang of guilt at what it said: _'Thanks for the outstanding service. Hope this helps your family!'_

She thought about taking it back, but there was no way to know for which waitress the generous tip had been intended. And she certainly needed the money. That hundred went into the account she had set up to get herself a third car. And not a one-tank wonder this time, she hoped.

The fourth time, it was planned.

Students were buying candy grams for their valentines, the money spent on them intended for the student body fund. Well, Shego had sat through enough staff meetings to know that the student body fund was a joke. Run by preteens with a single adult advisor who could care less, they argued about whether to buy crepe paper to decorate the dances with or balloons. Shego could think of far more important things to spend the money on. Like food.

At the end of each day for two weeks, she went to where the sickeningly pink cardboard box that held all of the payments was kept and took a portion of the funds. Not enough that anyone would notice, but enough to get her a microwave dinner each night. When discrepancies were noted, they were blamed on the bad math of twelve-year olds. No one was the wiser.

The fifth time, it wasn't money.

Shego needed pads. And she was fine with generic brand, but it was a Monday of the last week of the month and her account was just about empty. Payday wasn't until the first of the next month, and she needed every penny she had left to put gas into her new used car.

So while the tank was filling up, she went into the convenience store and tucked one of the smaller packages of feminine hygiene products into her purse.

She had a justification every single time, she realized, until the day she stole a stunning choker with a tiny silver pendant hanging from the center. She took that simply because she wanted it.

She left the department store that day keenly feeling the guilt and self-loathing she had been trying to avoid all along. But by the time she got back to her apartment, she had numbed herself to caring. After all, nobody got hurt, right?

But in reality, the discovery had begun before she ever left the tower, when they had all been fighting W.E.E. together. Maybe even earlier than that.

One time she used her to glow to blast a quartet of Gemini's agents into a wall, knocking them all unconscious. She'd learned from Betty later that all had minor contusions on their brains. Her response to the news was to shrug and say, "So?"

Another time she'd repeatedly tossed an agent into the air, using the concussive force of her glow to keep him aloft, cackling all the while at his fear and pleas for mercy. When her brothers had ordered her to stop, she'd let him fall. If Mego hadn't grown to jumbo size and caught him, the man would have impacted pavement.

"He'd just get killed some other way," she'd told Betty at the time.

The truth was, she was glad to have the opportunity to take out some of her anger with Global Justice on Sheldon Director, even if it was indirectly. By hurting his henchmen she slowed the progress of his evil organization. And she knew it frustrated him, considering the way he used to freak out about any wasted assets when he was still on the side of good.

The violence had been gratifying, and she was even more pleased that she had perfect control of her powers in each situation. As it turned out, Betty had been right about a balance of emotion being the key.

She hoped for another chance to try her glow out on a titanium wall.

But it turned out that the secret life Shego had begun to lead—one of thievery and mischief, sometimes justified in her mind and sometimes just for the sake of it—wasn't exactly compatible with her job.

Her patience with the kids wasn't as lasting as it was in her first year. She was more likely to shut down a student with a sarcastic comment, than she was to talk them through how to think about whatever their problem was. She also found herself wanting to work on lesson plans less and less, thinking instead of how she was going to steal the new boots that were in the window of the retail store down the street, or if there was some way to get the convertible off the used car lot across from her apartment without it being reported stolen.

But she put her double-life aside when her credential clearing interview was approaching, slipping effortlessly back into the persona of the hard-working independent woman who had not only been hired just out of college, but had kept her job for almost three years. A 'rare find,' her administrator had called her.

And after only the first few months no one at work, except for the occasional transfer student, mentioned her life as a superhero. She was nothing more than a colleague, and another teacher. She wanted to rub her normal life in Hego's and Betty's faces. But not until she had accomplished her final goal.

On the day of the interview she dressed in her best suit—purchased retail—and the boots she had stolen the year prior. She went over her notes one last time before hopping into her actually-running car to drive down to the district office. But no sooner had she started the engine than her wrist communicator jingled.

She had growled in frustration at the poor timing of it, but simply ignored it as she had all of the other calls for the last three years. Calls which, she had noticed, were becoming fewer and farther between.

The communicator jingled again and again as she took the practiced turns through the grid on her way to her final validation. Why were they trying so hard to reach her that day?

When she pulled into the parking lot she took the watch off and shut it up in the glove compartment. She couldn't have it going off during her interview, and she knew if she answered now it would be to a lecture on why she hadn't been answering. She didn't have the time.

She straightened her suit, grabbed her notes and poster board, and with her head held high she strode up the steps and into the building.

Thirty minutes later, the people of the panel were shaking her hand and congratulating her. She found herself trembling slightly as she smiled broadly back at them all, nervously adjusting and re-adjusting her headband between handshakes.

She had done it. And she had done it all by herself! She had a full and clear teaching credential for the State of Illinois. And she had already attained tenure in the district when she finished her second year, so she would have a job there for as long as she wanted.

After the papers were signed, she carried her poster board out to the car and climbed inside, sinking into the seat with a satisfied sigh.

And then...she didn't know what to do next.

Her smile slowly began to fall.

That was...it. She had accomplished her goal. More than one, in fact. And now all there was to do was...go back to her apartment, and start on the next week's lesson plans.

She turned the key in the ignition and listened to the familiar putter of her used car coming to life as the giddiness in her chest began to fade.

Maybe...maybe if she had someone to share it with...

She backed out of the parking space and began the drive back through downtown.

But there was no one. She was alone. She had worked hard for that too, deliberately avoiding her coworkers when they tried to talk about anything but work. There was no way she was going to make the mistakes she had made with the girls in college, or with Billy and Mr. Wang. And goodness knows she had gone to enormous lengths to avoid her brothers.

Her eyes flitted to the glove compartment where she remembered her communicator was hidden. Maybe...just this once, she could call them. They'd be happy for her, wouldn't they?

When she reached a red light, she leaned across the seat and opened the glove compartment. The communicator, jingling again, tumbled out onto the passenger seat. She picked it up and pressed the button to activate it.

"Hego?" she began excitedly. "Guess what? I—"

_"Where have you been?"_ her eldest brother's exasperated voice cut her off.

Tears began filling her eyes, and her grin quickly morphed into an angry frown. "Well excuse me, but I just happened to be—"

_"Gemini has captured Wego!"_


	11. And if we burn away

_A/N: Here is our longest chapter of the whole story. Some big warnings here: child endangerment, injury, blood, violence, fire, and dismemberment/disfigurement. Don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds._

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**Chapter 11: And if we burn away**

Hego, Shego, Mego, Betty Director, and a GJ special agent occupied the Go Jet, piloted by Shego as they searched for Gemini's lair.

"So explain this to me again?" Shego said. "They just...disappeared?"

"Yes!" Hego said, his eyes wide with worry. "It was like...the ground just opened up and swallowed them!"

"It must be some new technology he's stolen, the traitor!" Betty said, frowning bitterly.

"Yes, yes, exactly," Shego said impatiently. "That's where we should be starting. Where did they disappear?"

"At the foot of Go Mountain," Mego said. "Gemini sent us a tip that Aviarius was building a new lair around there."

Shego banked the jet sharply, not even needing the map as she had memorized the landscape long ago.

"And let me guess, no Aviarius?" she said. "Pretty dumb of Gemini to send word himself..."

"When we find him we'll need a plan," Hego ignored her, starting to come back to himself.

Shego rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah... How about, I distract him and his stupid Greek-Alphabet henchmen, and the rest of you find the twins?"

Mego scowled in disgust. "That's _always_ your plan."

Shego smirked. "Yeah, and if you guys would just follow it, it would work every time!"

Betty hit her forehead with her palm and grimaced. "Not this time. There will be too many variables."

"She's right, Sis'. We don't want to put Wego in jeopardy," Hego said with authority.

"They're _already_ in jeopardy! Ugh! All right look, there's the mountain. Let's eject."

"Not until we have a—plaaaaaaaaaan!"

Betty's directive was cut off as Shego activated the ejector seats, and she and the three costumed heroes were shot out of the jet while the remaining agent was left to pilot it to safety.

In unison, they activated their parachutes and drifted downward to the forested base of Go Mountain.

"Where did they disappear?" Shego asked through the wrist communicator.

"Right over there!" Hego answered, pointing to the western slope.

They all drifted that way and after landing, began examining the area.

"Okay, there's gotta be a...a switch, or a trapdoor, or something?" Shego said, pacing the ground and searching for any abnormalities.

"When they disappeared it was very sudden. They just—whoa!"

In that moment, the ground beneath them gave way as the aforementioned trapdoor opened and all four of them dropped about four feet before impacting with the cold, curved steel of a tube. It was angled sharply downward and they all immediately began to slide.

They were plunged into darkness when the door above them closed, and Shego ignited her glow so they could see. The tube was far too small for four and they all banged into one another as they tumbled down into whatever trap W.E.E. had prepared for them.

Shego set her face in determination. They _would_ save the twins. She was ready for anything.

Except for a pit of snarling lions.

As they fell out of the tube and landed in a heap on a hard-packed dirt floor, they saw in the dim green light of Shego's glow three muscular and maned feline forms. And before any of them could move, one of the lions roared and leaped toward them.

Shego screamed and threw her hands up in terror, but the claws and teeth never came. When she looked up, Hego was in front of her glowing a heroic blue with the lion firmly in his grasp.

Shego's breath caught and she simply stared, while Dr. Director retreated back toward the tube they had emerged from and Mego shrank down to almost nothing in a flicker of purple.

Hego tossed the lion he held atop another one, stunning both animals, but the other was crouching to spring.

Shego fired and hit the lion square in the face, causing it to snarl in pain.

"Shego!" Hego complained, and the green-skinned woman was startled out of her shock.

"What? They're bloodthirsty lions!"

"They're still living things," Hego argued as he pried open the steel doors he had noted on the wall opposite.

When one of the lions started toward them again, this time Shego only shot the ground in front of it. She did so repeatedly, until all the lions were backed into a corner. Meanwhile Dr. Director and her brothers had slipped through the door.

"Let's go, Sis'!"

She backed through the door, not wanting to take her eyes off of the lions for a moment. And once she was through, Hego pinched it closed again.

Now they were in a hallway illuminated by dim bulbs strung in intervals along the ceiling. Shego brought up the rear as the group ran onward in search of the twins.

Her heart was pounding and her forehead was covered in a sheen of sweat. Not just from the encounter with the lions, but because she realized...she hadn't been prepared for it.

Three years away from the Team, and she was rusty.

She set her jaw in determination as she hurried to match pace with her brothers. She couldn't let this get in the way of saving the twins.

The twisting hallway was bare except for the lighting, not a single door or window or anything to be seen. The lion pit was probably a place that few people ever ventured. But finally, the corridor opened up into a more symmetrical, constructed hallway with better lights and steel doors in intervals along the sides. What was inside, she wondered?

Shego realized that she had never been inside a career villain's lair before, and the simple feeling of 'unknown' gave her pause. What if there was a terrible trap waiting behind each door, like the lions?

Just then, a man in a purple jumpsuit and domino mask stepped around a bend in the hallway. On the breast of his jumpsuit a badge was pinned with the Greek letter sigma.

He gasped in shock at the sight of them and turned to run, but Mego dropped to his knees and then grew until he filled the whole tunnel. His size allowed him to reach forward and grab the henchman and bring him back to them.

Hego secured the man, allowing Mego to shrink back to normal. But before anyone could say anything Shego had pushed her older brother aside and grabbed the frightened man by the front of his jumpsuit.

"Where are the twins?" she snarled at him, shaking him sharply.

"Whoa, Sis', calm down!" Hego said.

Shego turned her head to frown at him. "I will _not_ calm down!"

Betty Director stepped up next to Shego and set her hands on her hips, adopting her most imperious and commanding air.

"Where is Gemini?" she asked the henchman.

The terrified man, apparently called Sigma, swallowed nervously and pointed back the way he had come.

"And where is a place that we can leave you safe and sound, hm?" Mego asked the man with a frown.

He pointed shakily at one of the identical doors next they had been passing, and Hego stepped up to the one indicated and found it unlocked. When the door swung open they all peered inside. There was a bed, nightstand, dresser, and a small bookcase. A small goose-neck lamp was on the nightstand.

"You...live here?" Shego said in astonishment.

"Put him out, then we'll secure him in here," Hego ordered.

Mego lifted his hand already glowing purple to do the deed, but Shego beat him to it. With a pressure far greater than necessary, she focused her glow over the man's head and he fell unconscious, his head snapping back from the force.

"Shego!" Mego said, his eyes wide with shock.

Betty frowned, and set her fingers to the man's neck to check his pulse. Shego blinked in shock. She was angry, but she hadn't actually meant...

"He's alive," Betty said, eyeing Shego suspiciously.

Shego breathed a sigh of relief, but then found her brothers towering over her with disapproving frowns.

"Hey, it's one less person to sneak up on us while we're getting the twins out," she protested, preparing for the argument she knew was forthcoming.

Hego scoffed in disgust and carried the man into the room, laying him on the bed and then closing the door.

"Let's just go," he said when he came out.

Shego blinked in surprise at his attitude. Hego had never dropped anything like that before. She followed behind the trio ahead, wondering. Was it just because the twins were in danger? Or was he actually mad at her?

She frowned. It wasn't as though it mattered. Once the twins were safe, she'd go right back to her normal life and her career.

They continued more cautiously down the hallway and past several more doors that were apparently the living quarters of the henchmen, until the sounds of activity ahead caused them to pause and sneak along the wall.

One by one they peered around the corner and looked into a large room built into a natural cave under the mountain.

Pretty clever, Shego thought.

The cave was roughly spherical with stalagmites rising menacingly from the floor and stalactites dripping water covering nearly every part of the ceiling. Lights were strung among them, the flickering of the bulbs causing the stalactites to look like uneven canine teeth that were slowing crushing down into the floor below.

Shego wondered if Gemini had set the lights to flicker on purpose, to make the place more frightening. Intentional or not...it was working.

In the center of the room was an absurd, raised dais about fifteen feet high with a throne on it as well as a desk with a laptop computer. Around the walls were more desks and computers, all manned by the purple jumpsuit-clad henchmen, and they could see that on several of the monitors were views of the outside of the mountain—security cameras, no doubt. The other computer screens were busy with text that they were too far away to read, and others still seemed to be displaying blueprints of a kind.

Across from the hallway where they were hidden was a second hallway without doors, and there was one wall without desks where the cave floor was naturally lower. All the drippings from the stalactites were running to that spot in jagged trickles, creating a shallow puddle.

The floor in front of the dais was shockingly empty, save for two chairs. And sitting in the chairs were the twins, restrained at the wrists and ankles by metal belts.

The three oldest hero siblings exchanged confused looks.

"Why haven't they escaped...?" Hego whispered, his brow furrowing.

"Gemini must be holding something over them," Betty said from behind them, and they turned to look at her. "So here's the plan—"

"Wait," Shego said, "we already have a plan. I go in blasting, and you get the twins out," she said, pointing at her brothers.

Betty frowned at her. "But your brother has a point. Wego should have been able to escape by themselves already."

"What if they're hurt?" Hego said with a gasp, and Shego's face fell in worry. In the over ten years and hundreds of missions they had been through together, no one had ever gotten hurt. Which she suddenly realized...was very unrealistic. How had they all managed to escape every situation unscathed?

"All right, how about this," she said, a new idea formulating. "Gemini knows I haven't been with you for the last three years, right?" After her brothers nodded in affirmative, she continued. "So how about I go in alone, and he won't realize that you're here? And _then_ I'll distract him and you get the twins out?"

Her brothers still looked skeptical, and Betty shook her head.

"But you're still forgetting—"

"Well, well, well," a deep voice growled through a loudspeaker system fraught with static, "it seems we have some uninvited guests."

The quartet whirled around to see all of the jumpsuit-clad henchmen racing toward them, while seated on the throne atop the dais Gemini spoke into a microphone mounted on the desk.

"Attack!" he said, his voice crackling through the speakers and echoing across the cave.

"Pff. Is that really necessary?" Shego said, crossing her arms in feigned boredom.

She stayed in the hallway and watched as Hego, Mego, and Dr. Director ran forward to meet the henchmen and began making quick work of them, blurs of purple flying across the cave as they were tossed aside. She looked at Gemini, who was grinning wickedly as the fight took place below him. And she looked at the twins, who were still strapped to the chairs. One of them had turned to watch the fight.

Hego was right. Why _hadn't_ they escaped?

After assessing the fight for another few seconds, she ran from the hallway and around the center of the activity, heading straight for the twins. As she got closer she could see that Alex was the one watching with wide eyes, but Dylan's eyes were closed and his chin had fallen forward.

Panic gripped Shego's chest as she dodged a flying henchman and quickened her pace, focused on her goal. But then Alex's eyes turned to meet hers and he called out a desperate warning.

"Stop! It's a trap!"

She skidded to a halt, still twenty feet away from the chairs. Suddenly a spotlight illuminated them from above as well as the empty floor in front of them. Through the faulty loudspeaker, Gemini laughed menacingly.

"No no... Do go ahead Shego, and rescue your dear brothers," the villain said.

Shego glanced at her older brothers and Dr. Director, who were still keeping the henchmen busy. They had started appearing out of the other hallway now and there appeared to be no end to them. Shego figured there must be as many as were in the Greek alphabet. And since GJ and Team Go never _actually_ hurt people—a policy she had long taken issue with—the ones that had already been tossed aside simply got up and kept fighting.

She stepped forward cautiously until she reached the foot of the dais and began edging around the front. It was then that she saw the other side of Dylan's face, covered in blood that was still dripping down his cheek and disappearing in the red and black of his costume.

Her eyes widened in fear. "Dylan?" she cried, stepping forward.

"Stop!" Alex cried desperately.

Shego looked between him and his twin at a loss. She didn't understand. Why wouldn't Alex let her help? What had happened to Dylan? Why hadn't the two of them escaped? And not knowing she found made her more afraid than she had ever been in her life.

"What happened? No, wait, why can't I help you?" she asked.

"The crocodiles!" Alex answered.

"What?"

"Oh yes," Gemini's voice boomed through the crackling speakers. "Take one more step toward your dear brothers, and I'll push this button, opening a trapdoor in the floor that drops fifty feet into an underwater cave, swarming with the beasts. But I forgot..." Shego craned her neck up to see him as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "does this button open the trapdoor under the chairs, or the one in front of it?"

Shego blinked and looked back at the twins, for the first time not having a clue what she should do.

"H-he means it, Shego," Alex said fearfully. "When we were caught there were lions, and...and..."

Alex turned his wide eyes to his twin, tears beginning to pool in their red depths behind the black domino mask.

Shego gasped, the blood on Dylan's cheek suddenly explained. "Why didn't you escape before this?" she asked, gesturing at the chairs.

"Because our powers only work together!" Alex said.

Shego looked between the twins, realizing their handicap for the first time. She looked beyond to where Hego and Mego were finally exhausting the alphabet team, and Dr. Director stood about ten feet behind the twins facing the dais in a fighting stance, an angry glower on her features.

"Ah, Dr. Director, we meet again," Gemini said into the microphone.

"Cut the crap Sheldon, and let Wego go!" Betty shouted back to him.

Hego and Mego flanked her then, their expressions of anger matching hers. Shego huddled back against the base of the dais as she watched and listened.

Gemini chuckled. "Ah Sister dear, I realize you may find my new success as a super villain a bit unnerving..."

_'Super villain?'_ Shego thought. That was a title she hadn't ever heard in practice. She supposed it was the opposite of their 'super hero.'

"And that I have built a better organization than you must be rather...demoralizing," he continued, "but there is no reason we cannot continue to co-exist as opposite sides of the same coin."

"What?" Betty said in shocked confusion.

"And since I...am...Gemini, it makes sense that I should get the twins, and you can keep the...other two," he finished, waving a dismissive hand toward Hego and Mego.

Betty crossed her arms. "What would make _actual_ sense is for each of us to take one of the twins. Not that I'm bargaining."

"I know that!" Gemini said with a growl, leaning forward and hitting his desk with a fist. Then he seemed to recover himself and sat back. "But as you know their powers only work when they are together. And with their cloning powers I can build my Worldwide Evil Empire in no time! So...run along now, or I'll feed them to the crocodiles."

"You wouldn't," Betty said, eyes narrowed.

The recovered henchmen were surrounding Betty and the two oldest brothers. Meanwhile, Shego had begun taking cautious steps toward the twins. Maybe, while Gemini was distracted...

"Ah, ah, ah," his voice suddenly admonished, and Shego leapt forward toward the twins just as a trapdoor opened where she had been standing.

She didn't spare a glance back, trusting that there were in fact crocodiles, and she fired her glow precisely at the twins' restraints, freeing them. Dylan began to fall forward and she snatched him up and leapt away just as the second trapdoor opened, and this time she watched as both empty chairs fell more than thirty feet into the dark waters below. She immediately heard thrashing from the depths, and she gulped as the reality of the threat hit her.

"Get them!" Gemini's voice crackled through the speakers.

Shego ran toward her oldest brothers, but the henchmen who had surrounded them now turned on her.

"Help!" Alex cried, and she turned to see him being surrounded by another group of jumpsuit-clad goons.

"Rrrgh!" Shego growled, igniting her glow in her free hand and firing at the henchmen surrounding Alex. Those struck began to scatter, gripping their singed body parts in pain. For once, Shego didn't hear Hego complaining about her use of 'force.'

"Wait until I tell Mother about this!" Betty's voice sounded from her left, and Shego turned to see that Gemini had left his throne and was now locked in physical combat with his sister.

Mego grew in a purple glow until he filled the open space, crowding everyone else back against the walls. With his oversized hands he pinned nearly half of the henchmen against one of the rows of desks. Hego took on the others and started clearing a path around the the back of the dais.

"Get them out of here!" he called to Shego, who looked across the gaping hole of the trapdoor where Alex was staring back at her.

Shego looked back at the hallway they had come from that led to the room with the lions, and then across to the one that had admitted the henchmen. Shifting Dylan to her shoulder, she started around the back of the dais toward that one. But no sooner had she reached its steps than an enormous henchman, larger than Hego, stepped in front of her.

She fired her glow but he stepped aside with unexpected agility and lunged for the unconscious twin in her arms. She ducked under his reach and ran toward the hallway.

"Shego!" Alex called, and she turned to see the other twin being surrounded by henchmen again.

She looked to where Mego still had eight henchmen pinned—the others having wriggled free—and where Hego was still knocking the rest down with all the force of a six-pound bowling ball, and then pushing them down with as much gentleness when they got up again. Betty's and Gemini's fight had moved back toward the opposite wall where the puddle was.

"Argh, how have you gotten _anything_ done without me?" Shego growled in frustration, shooting her glow repeatedly at the henchmen surrounding Alex, who was backing away in the only open direction—toward Gemini and Betty.

"We're heroes," Hego said as he tossed one a henchman into another, "we don't hurt people!"

"Have you noticed that they don't seem to have the same issue?" she called back, running forward now to meet her older brother in the middle of the floor. "Here!" she said, handing Dylan off to him.

Both hands free, Shego smirked in satisfaction as she knocked all of the henchmen back one by one with powerful green blasts.

"Sis'!" Hego complained.

"Help!" Alex's cry drew their attention, and they both gasped in shock seeing the preteen boy now in Gemini's grasp.

Mego shrank back down to normal and ran to his older siblings' sides, frowning menacingly.

"Surrender your brother, and I may not hurt this one," Gemini said as he climbed the steps of his dais again.

The three oldest looked at the bleeding, unconscious Dylan in Hego's arms and then looked back at the villain.

"Never!" Hego said with far too confident a tone, Shego thought. She noticed that Betty was now sneaking around the base of the dais and heading for its stairs. It was a distraction that would only last a moment, she knew and she began frantically looking around the rest of the cave. And then, inspiration struck. Now she just needed to wait.

"He's useless to you without his twin, rather like my sister is without me," Gemini continued. Then his eyes widened as he saw Betty running up the steps at him, her teeth bared in determination.

Now was her only chance.

"Hego!" Shego hissed, "throw me up there!" she said, pointing toward the stalactites near the back wall.

"What?" Hego said, brow furrowing.

"_Now!_" Shego demanded.

The blue-haired hero effortlessly tossed her up into the jungle of stone and Shego reached forward until her hands clutched the flimsy wires of the lights that hung on the ceiling. She held on as gravity took her down to the floor and the wires began to tear from the pressure.

"Sis'!" Hego called in alarm.

Gemini and Betty, facing off with Alex still struggling in the man's grasp, turned when they heard his alarm.

Shego landed on both feet in the puddle, and then leaping up again she dropped the live wires into the water. The puddle began rippling and buzzing furiously as the high voltage lines came to rest and a flaming line of current began waving between them beneath the surface.

Apparently the flickering _was_ just for show.

Barely keeping her balance, Shego landed mere inches in front of the puddle, her hair falling into her face as her headband was knocked askew. She pulled the offending accessory off and dropped it, tossing her hair back over her head as she looked around the cave at the results of her effort.

The lights of the cave were dimming and brightening in rhythm. Bulbs began popping and showering sparks down on the cave occupants, and they all covered their heads protectively, the fight momentarily paused. On one of the desks, a computer exploded, causing the piece of wooden furniture to quickly catch fire.

There must have been something in the varnish on the desks, because it was only seconds before the flames spread along the entire wall and the cave that had before seemed dark and slightly spooky was now terrifying.

"My...my evil empire!" Gemini shouted in alarm, dropping Alex as he threw his hands up and gripped his hair in frustration.

Betty snatched Alex's hand and together they began running down the dais steps.

"Hey! Mine!" Gemini shouted with a snarl, leaping down the stairs and grabbing Alex's other hand.

"Grrr!" Shego growled, running toward them and igniting her glow.

When Gemini saw her he let go with a gasp, but it was too late. The green inferno had left Shego's hands and was racing toward him. He threw a hand up in front of his face protectively, and when the blast hit him he let out a bloodcurdling scream such as Shego had never heard before.

Alex and Betty scrambled away as the flames spread through the cave, and Hego and Mego beckoned them all toward the hallway as terrified henchmen ran past, effectively showing them their way out. Shego didn't wait to see the damage she had done, shaken by the way Gemini had screamed, and followed.

"Come on!" Hego called, waving them toward him frantically. When the trio arrived he scooped Alex up into his arms so he held both twins. "Mego, you get out that guy we locked up."

"What!?" Shego shouted incredulously and turned back, having already started down the hallway.

"And Shego you set the lions free," he continued.

She threw her hands up as she yelled at him. "Are you insane!?"

"I'll get the lions," Betty said in compromise, and ran back into the smoke-filled cave.

"He's right, Sis'," Mego said, going back as well and disappearing into the haze.

"Fine then, you get Gemini, and I'll get Wego out," Hego continued.

Shego scowled. "He doesn't deserve saving!"

Hego frowned at her, his eyes shining with the reflection of the flames behind them. "We're not like him. We're heroes."

Shego stared at him in anger and he stared back, neither willing to back down.

"Shego, please!" Alex said, and she looked into his wide, fear-filled eyes.

"Ugh, fine!" she said, crossing her arms and turning back into the smoke. Just then, Mego and the previously locked-up henchman ran past her. And somewhere in the cave she could hear the growls of the lions.

Leaving her brothers behind, she walked closer to the flames than she would have liked as she headed back toward the dais, much more concerned about the teeth and claws of terrified beasts than she was of something not too dissimilar to her own powers.

And then from somewhere in the smoke, Betty screamed.

Shego rushed toward the sound and saw through the haze her former boss standing with hands clasped over her mouth, eyes wide in shock. And then through the smoke came the raised, bloody stump of a wrist attached to an arm, attached to the enraged Gemini.

Shego stopped short and choked, both on the smoke and on the bile that rose into her throat.

She looked down at her hands in shock. She...she had...?

"You will _pay!_" Gemini shouted, lunging for Betty's throat with his hand and his...wrist.

Too shocked to react, Betty was soon gasping for air and kneeling under his crushing attack.

"No!" Shego shouted, firing her glow at him.

With a wicked grin he lifted Betty up in front of him, using her as a shield. Shego gasped as her glow grazed the side of Betty's face and the woman cried out in agony.

"You—!" Shego shouted and ran forward in fury.

Gemini shoved Betty toward her, but Shego dodged the woman and continued on, both hands ignited. She leapt upon him and knocked him back with her knees on his chest, swiping at him with her glow. He knocked her first strike away with his good hand, but the second hit the side of his face.

Gemini growled and raised his bloody, ragged stump in front of her face, and she froze in shock. He shoved her off of him and ran up to the top of the dais. With a frustrated growl Shego rose and followed, but she paused to look back to where Betty had fallen. She caught sight of the blue and gray-clad woman, holding the side of her face with both hands and running through the smoke for the exit.

_'Good_,' Shego thought. _'That will make this easier_.'

She reached the top of the dais where Gemini stood confidently, his hand on his hip as he held the stump of his right arm aloft, admiring it. He held his left eye tightly closed, as if in pain, and his cheek and hair on that side were singed where the green glow had struck him. His bizarre behavior gave Shego pause, and she halted her approach.

After a moment, Gemini turned a thoughtful eye to her. "She's nothing without all of you, you know."

Shego squinted through the smoke that burned her eyes and fought back a cough. "I know."

"Global Justice became too dependent on Team Go. They would collapse without you. Why, it's the reason I left. I don't associate with failure like my sister does. And I knew that eventually you would all wise up and leave. It was no surprise to me that you were the first."

Shego crossed her arms and turned away from him, uncomfortable under his wicked grin. But for some reason...she wanted to hear what he had to say.

"You were always my favorite," he continued. "You were always just waiting for a chance to cross the line. And..." he chuckled lowly and held his stump out toward her. "You finally did!"

Shego grimaced, feeling the bile rise in her throat again. She hadn't meant to do it.

"Why don't you follow in my footsteps and join me?" Gemini said silkily, extending his good hand toward her. "You would make a superb Agent Alpha."

Shego looked between his good hand and the bloody stump, and then at the rising smoke and flames around her.

"Sorry, Gemini," she said, doing a graceful back-flip off the dais and landing in a clear spot below. "I don't associate with failure, either."

With that, she ran down the hallway and away from the cave, the flames quickly overtaking the door behind her.

* * *

Back in the living quarters of Go Tower, Alex knelt worriedly at his twin's side who lay miserable on the sofa. The scratch from the lion had looked far worse than it actually was, and the GJ doctors said he wouldn't even have a scar—thanks to their state-of-the-art medical technology, of course.

Mego was frowning in his chair, Shego sat curled up in hers with her back to her family, while Hego paced a circle around the coffee table.

"But we're heroes! We don't leave people to die, not even the bad guys!" Hego was all but shouting.

Shego curled tighter into the chair, brushing her hair out of her face. Her headband had been forgotten in the cave and she hadn't left any personal items in the Tower. She wasn't used to her hair behaving this way.

"For the last time," she said grumpily, "he didn't want to be saved."

"We don't do what the villains tell us," Hego frowned, stopping to tower over her.

"Yeah, well, if I'd stayed to fight it out I might have ended up trapped down there too," she said, barely giving him a glance.

"Would you give it a rest, Bro'?" Mego said from across the table. The blue-haired man turned with his brow raised in question. "I mean, this guy's been a problem for almost ten years now. Like some ridiculous comic book reboot. I personally don't care if he got burned to a crisp."

"Mego!" Hego exclaimed, affronted.

"_Thank_ you," Shego said, turning just enough to look at her purple-skinned ally.

"But I still agree that we shouldn't hurt people on purpose," Mego finished, causing Hego to deflate slightly.

"I didn't..." Shego mumbled, the memory of Gemini's injury fresh in her mind. Three years of not using her powers had been a mistake. What if she had done something worse?

"Nevertheless," Hego continued, "I'm putting you into strict remedial training, Missy."

"_'Missy'?_"

"You can't rejoin the Team with that reckless attitude."

Shego brushed her hair out of her eyes and stood to face him, hands on her hips.

"I'm not rejoining the Team!" she said disbelievingly. "Hego. I _just_ cleared my credential. Today! And I already have tenure. And a car, and an apartment. If anything—"

She stopped, realizing what she had been about to say. It was a thought that had been forgotten somewhere over the past three years. Despite the loneliness that she had buried with the distraction of petty thievery, she had completely forgotten the reason she had decided to make something of her life in the first place.

"What?" Mego asked, straightening up.

Shego took a breath, and then plunged ahead. "If anything, it's all of you who should be coming with me. Because of my job we can all just...be normal again."

The twins looked at her uncertainly, and Mego had the decency to at least look interested. But Hego frowned.

"Being heroes _is_ normal for us."

"No, it's not," she continued. "GJ turned us into what we are. They never gave us the chance to be anything else."

Hego ran a hand through his hair and walked a few paces away, his back to all of them. Mego and the twins looked back and forth between their oldest siblings, waiting.

"Why isn't this enough for you?" he finally asked, turning back to her.

"Because it's _wrong_," she said pleadingly, "it's not...ours. Don't you—any of you—ever want to do anything else? Brody, didn't you have your own ideas about the future when you were a kid?"

Hego hissed in a breath, but this time let go her indiscretion as he saw it. "We're productive members of society," he argued instead, before Mego could answer. "isn't that what all kids are supposed to grow up into?"

"Yes, but doing it the way _they_ want! Not how someone else tells them to."

Hego's frown deepened, and Shego turned away again, her brow twisting in hurt.

"I did all of it for you," she said quietly, thinking back. Three years of mostly-honest work, and post-graduate school and college before that. And getting the twins' custody papers prepared after their parents died. She remembered every problem she had stumbled into along the way, and subsequently overcome. "I have a real job, a real place to live, I pay taxes, and I finally have a little savings. I did it so we could all have a real life!"

Hego's iron countenance began to crack. Shego was so focused on him and her own worries that she didn't notice her other brothers beginning to look hopeful. Finally, Hego's expression returned to his usual, broad smile.

"Aw, Sis'," he said, stepping up to her and giving her a side-hug. "You may be quirky, but you'll always be part of the Team."

"Huh?"

"You've always been the one to try to do it your own way. And it's not a bad fall-back! But Sis,' we work best when we work together. And this...little solo-thing you've been up to just isn't good for us. Just look at all the mistakes you made today."

Shego's breath began coming faster as she listened to him talk. Her eyes welled with tears as she ground her teeth together. How could he not get it? Why was he so, so stubborn? So blind?

In one move she shoved him off and stepped over the coffee table to stare down at Mego.

"You're an adult. What do you have to say about it, huh?" she demanded, her temper flaring.

Not one for confrontation, the purple-haired man turned away with a frown. "I'm doing fine, thanks for asking," he replied sarcastically.

"Shego..." Dylan finally spoke up from where he lay on the sofa, and she turned toward him. "We hate it when you two fight. Why can't you just listen to Hego?"

"Listen to big, blue, and brainless?" she said, gesturing at him with both hands.

"You're the one always starting the fights," Alex added, frowning.

"That's right," Hego said. "Little Sis' has always had something of a temper. That's why she's careless with her powers," he said condescendingly, patting her atop her head.

Shego growled and tossed back her wild hair. "Look, if you're happy doing this, then fine! But at least—" She paused, taking a slow breath in an effort to calm down. "At least do it on your own. Without Global Justice."

"Why would we do that?" Mego asked.

"Rrgh! Have you forgotten every conversation we've ever had!? They are the source of all of our problems! They're the reason you're all brainwashed into thinking what you do is normal! They're the reason Mom and Dad are dead!"

"What?" both twins said anxiously at the same time Hego gasped dramatically.

Shego grit her teeth and looked away. She wanted so much to tell them the truth. But it would hurt them. And they had been hurt enough that day.

"Trust me. If you're really such a good team, then you don't need them. And if there's really nothing wrong with them, then ask to leave and see what they say. I'll bet you a month's salary—" she hesitated, thinking of how little money she earned, "that they'll come up with any argument to keep you. GJ are _not_ on your side!"

"They're our family!" Hego protested.

"No, they're the corporate machine. We," she said, raising a finger and waving it in a broad circle so it covered all of them, "are family."

Shego took off her wrist communicator and dropped it on the coffee table. She strode past her brothers and headed toward the door, afraid that if she looked at any of them she might change her mind. But if this was the only way to make them see the light...

"Shego!" the twins called after her.

She stopped at the fear in their voices, and rolling her eyes at her own softness she turned around to face them all one last time.

"I'll mail you the twin's custody papers. They're all yours."

"You're not making any sense," Hego said, shaking his head defiantly.

Shego looked at him helplessly. "Go to college, Brendan," she said. And after giving them all one final look, she left.

The door swung closed behind her before she could hear the question Mego voiced into the heavy silence: "What if she's right?"

* * *

Shego strode determinedly to the vehicle launch bay, ignoring everyone and everything around her as she went. One day with her brothers after three years and she felt ready to jump off a cliff. Or maybe knock one down.

She knew it wasn't just them. What had happened with Gemini really bothered her. She had had no idea that she was capable of such...such...

"Shego! Leaving so soon?"

Shego glanced up to meet the eyes of Betty Director as she exited the training room, but then stopped short and stared. The older woman now wore a black eye-patch over her right eye. And her cheek was still red from where the green glow had burned her.

"Betty... I'm sorry," Shego said, her eyes wide.

Betty chuckled. "It was Sheldon's fault, honey. Not yours. But, where are you going? The reunion has just begun!"

"There is no reunion. I just came to help my brothers." _'But they don't want my help...'_ she thought to herself.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Betty said.

An awkward silence followed as Shego stared into the woman's...eye. She felt the bile in her throat again as images of the fight in the cave came back to her.

Betty cleared her throat. "So...teaching is going well?"

She nodded, tossing her hair back and then folding her hands in front of her. Would the woman just stop so she could _get out of there?_

"You know, you really should stay for at least a few days. You've really fallen out of practice," Betty said, gesturing toward the open door to the training room.

Despite herself, Shego peered inside and viewed the familiar obstacle course with its various hazards and physical challenges. She had mastered it all before she was out of high school. But what she was interested in was the titanium wall beyond, with its painted bullseyes and burn-marks from her old power training sessions.

"I can help you refocus your skills. You'll be ready for missions again in no time," Betty continued as Shego stepped through the door and lined herself up to face the wall.

She thought about Gemini, and his obliterated right hand. She thought about sitting in her car after passing her credential clearing interview, and having no one to share her excitement with. She thought about classes full of adoring students, and evenings spent sneaking jewelry out of department stores in plain sight of anyone who had half a mind to look. She thought about nights spent sleeping in freezing, broken-down cars, and long walks in heels to the bus station. She thought about how she had given up her dignity to cheat her way out of the credential program, and how her dignity had first been stolen years earlier by a master liar she had been naive enough to trust.

But mostly she thought about her brothers. About Mego's apathy, and the twins' gleeful and blind dedication to 'the greater good.' And she thought about Hego and his stupid, stupid stubbornness, and how he couldn't see beyond the end of his own nose to the truth of how their lives had been ruined from the moment their parents had signed the Global Justice contract.

And igniting her glow in an instant, she shot straight ahead with both hands. The titanium wall crumbled into nothingness, dust rising from where it had stood.

"I think I'll do just fine on my own," she said with a smirk, turning and walking down the hallway to leave the Tower. "Later, Doc," she called over her shoulder.

She never looked back.


	12. To stand with you in a ring of fire

_A/N: And here we are...the finale! Not really any warnings in this one. There will be more notes to read at the end-do read them, they explain a lot, including the chapter titles. Thank you for reading, and enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 12: To stand with you in a ring of fire, I'll forget the days gone by**

"I worked for another year after that," Shego told Drakken, her legs now stretched out to the side and her feet resting on the coffee table.

The rain had stopped hours earlier, but it was still overcast and now nearly night, so the light in the lair was still dim and artificial.

Sometime during the telling they had moved closer together, so that now there was only a single couch cushion between them. He was cross-legged and facing her directly, leaning against the back of the sofa but with his head up, listening intently. She was more relaxed, her head nestled against her folded arms atop the back of the sofa. But she too was looking at him throughout the narrative.

"But after awhile it just...lost its meaning," she continued. "There wasn't any point. My brothers didn't want anything to do with my job, and I...didn't have any other reason to do it."

"What about...teaching kids to be free thinkers?" Drakken asked, remembering what she had said earlier.

"That's just the excuse I gave my brothers. I didn't actually _care_ about all those little brats," she lied easily. The truth she didn't tell him was how she cared too much, while very few of her students did. They were all either self-centered like Mego, dumb and stubborn like Hego, or too young to understand like the twins. What they all needed...just like she and her brothers...were parents. But she couldn't be that for all of them any more than GJ could be for her family.

"And I was having a lot of fun taking things that didn't belong to me," she said with a smirk. Drakken gave a small grin of understanding as she reminisced. "It finally hit me that I could get more of the things I wanted just by taking them rather than waiting for a paycheck. So at the end of my fourth year at the school, I handed in my resignation and packed my bags and took off."

"Where did you go?"

"Everywhere. I stole jewels in Rome, hawked them in Florence, and then spent the money vacationing in Sicily. I did the same thing in France, Spain, Russia...everywhere."

"And you were never caught?" Drakken asked in awe.

"Oh, eventually. In Egypt, robbing a pharaoh's tomb. The green skin gave it away."

Drakken grimaced.

"It was the first time I purposely used my powers for evil, blowing the tires of that police car," she said with a contented sigh.

Drakken leaned his cheek down on his forearm, mirroring her pose, and smiled at her. She smiled back as she thought about those early days, happily tarnishing the name of Team Go as she committed daylight robbery and assault in full costume. It was a wonderful time. Although it did get a lot harder to keep funds in her offshore bank account once various countries had put her on their 'most wanted' lists.

She sat up suddenly when she realized that they had stopped talking, and Drakken was staring at her with a dopey grin.

"What are you looking at?" she asked with a quick frown.

He blushed. "N-nothing. I have...some strawberry soda in the fridge. Would you like some?"

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but his expectant expression never faltered. "Yes..." she admitted through clenched teeth.

Drakken bounced off the sofa and dashed away to the kitchen. "Ice cream?" he called back to her, "I bought three flavors."

"Vanilla," she called to him as she stood up and stretched.

Why on _earth_ was she still telling him all of this? After she had discovered her passion for evil she had left her past firmly in the past, not even opening the door to her memories when she'd been forced to work with her brothers again through Aviarus and later Electronique.

So why now? And why Drakken?

_'Speak of the blue devil,'_ she thought, as he flounced back into the room with a tray of desserts.

"What are you drinking?" she asked him as she sat back on the couch and reached for the pink beverage he'd brought her.

"Cream soda," he answered, sipping from his straw.

Shego watched him for a minute as he happily dug into his own vanilla ice cream, that same dopey grin on his face that he got whenever things were going well for him.

It was too much for Shego.

"All right," she said, setting her soda on the coffee table. "I don't know what you're up to, or how you got me to tell you all of that, but whatever it is you can count me out."

Drakken blinked at her, utterly confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Whatever...stupid idea you're onto now, I'm not interested."

"I'm not onto..." he furrowed his brow. "What?"

They stared at each other for a moment in equal confusion.

Shego blinked again. Had he just been asking her because he was...interested? No ulterior motive?

It did fit his marrow better, she realized.

But then why had she told him?

She sipped from her soda again and took a small bite of ice cream, watching him suspiciously. But his grin had returned as he went back to his own dessert.

"Remember how we met?" he finally asked, looking up at her expectantly.

Shego kept watching him uncertainly, but cast her mind back to that fateful day three years earlier.

* * *

Shego parked the stolen car in the lot of the Middleton Convention Center in Colorado and warily approached the building. She'd have turn and run if not for the sight of other costumed individuals leaving their cars to head inside, too.

Apparently villain conventions _were_ a real occurrence. So why not hero conventions, she couldn't help but wonder. Maybe just another thing GJ had kept from her.

Inside the hall were the typical booths one would find at any themed event, with these distinctly designed for illegal activities. There were vendors selling ray guns, guides to planning long-term schemes, how to consistently evade authorities, and more.

After three hours of wandering, Shego was tired. She had seen many booths of interest, attended a lecture about how to discover your evil passion, and spent far too much money on what she knew in the end were useless gadgets. She was very low on funds, after all, and she still needed to get her microwave dinner for that evening.

She sat down at one of the tables in the lobby and dropped her bags of merchandise at her feet, letting her forehead drop onto the table. She could really use a place to sleep for more than one or two nights in a week before the authorities caught up with her. And she didn't want to be sleeping in the car when they found that, too.

Just then a rustling drew her attention, and she lifted her head in time to see two cackling teenage boys running off with her bags.

"Hey!" she shouted, standing up.

"Watch your stuff, wannabe!" one of them called back at her. Blinking, Shego sank back into the chair and put her head down again. She hadn't really wanted that stuff anyway. And with a sickening feeling she realized she still wasn't used to distrusting absolutely everyone.

Wannabe villain was right.

She sighed and sat up, looking around at the characters walking to and fro in the lobby, ignoring her completely.

"Psh, villain convention. What a waste of time," she said to herself, letting her eyes wander down to the various ads and business cards strewn across the table.

But then, one paper in particular caught her attention because it was very clearly a want ad.

_'Villains hire other villains?'_ she thought, as she read the paper.

_**'Wanted: Full-time scientist's assistant. Room and board provided, five-figure annual salary. Inquire with Dr. Drakken in room C10501 of the Middleton Convention Center or call (555) 555-0319.'**_

Shego looked around at the numbers of the rooms until she found which way she would need to go, and then hurried to find this Dr. Drakken. She didn't know anything about being a scientist's assistant, but for room, board, and especially a five-figure salary she could learn. Maybe it would be as much as she had made teaching.

Minutes later she was two floors up and cautiously stepping through the doorway into room C10501. The room had a single occupant—a man, sitting behind a card table with his brow furrowed and head down, looking at a mess of papers that had been spread out in front of him. He had pale blue skin, unkempt black hair that hung to his shoulders, and a traditional scientist's lab coat, except that his was pale blue to match his skin.

She took a few steps forward and cleared her throat, causing him to look up from the papers he had been studying.

"Yes? Who are you?" he asked with a frown, looking her up and down suspiciously. But then his eyes widened and he gasped.

Shego tensed, expecting the usual when she was recognized.

"You're...green!" he said.

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. But he didn't say anything else.

"Yeah...and you're blue," she finally said. And then she wondered... She had never met an abnormally colored person outside of her family. Maybe she and this scientist had something in common.

"Who are you?" he asked again, this time with enthusiasm instead of his original suspicion.

Shego blinked. _What?_

He continued staring at her, his whole body starting to quiver in excitement. It made her uneasy, but she found herself compelled.

"Who am _I_?" she finally said.

"Are you here to apply for the assistant position?" he asked, his expression brightening all the more as he began a bizarre little happy-dance.

"Yes..." Shego said, still looking at him in shock.

The blue-skinned man rushed around to the front of the table and grabbed one of her hands in both of his, shaking it vigorously.

"I'm Dr. Drakken. And you are...?"

She blinked again. "Shego..."

He cocked his head at her. "Shego what?"

"Just...Shego," she replied, still staring at him in awe.

He...really didn't know who she was?

Dr. Drakken seemed to study her for a moment, and then whatever had occurred to him he forgot as he hurried back around to sit at the card table again, beckoning her to join him.

She sat down in the chair that was set up opposite and smoothed her hair. Then she furrowed her brow. Why was she nervous for a job interview for a villain?

"Now then, eh...Miss Shego. Have you ever been a scientist's assistant before?"

"No," she said honestly, "I don't actually know too much about science. Just the required courses in college."

Suddenly, he seemed hesitant. "Ah, you have a degree?"

"Yes. In Child Development."

Dr. Drakken frowned. "Well. Do you have any skills that would benefit my evil plans for world domination?"

Shego blinked in surprise. _World domination?_

"Well, I have...um...powers," she finished lamely.

"What kind of powers?" he asked, drawing away from her in sudden suspicion.

Shego frowned, and then taking aim at one of the folding chairs in the room she fired her glow, knocking it over.

Dr. Drakken's eyes went wide. "Ohhh... Can you...do anything else?"

She smirked and fired at a different chair, this time incinerating it and leaving only a pile of ash.

Dr. Drakken's jaw fell open. He blinked twice, and then grinned in a way that Shego could only describe as covetous. And the look in his eyes was most definitely evil.

"You're hired!" he said, raising his fists above his head triumphantly. "Sign here," he said, pushing a stack of papers toward her.

"Whoa, slow down Big Blue, I don't sign anything that I haven't read."

The evil glint in Dr. Drakken's eye was replaced with a sheepish one, and he leaned back in the chair and cleared his throat, folding his hands on the table demurely.

"Of course. Please, take your time," he said. Though she could tell his feet were still dancing under the table.

Shego began reading and was soon surprised with how detailed and precise the document was. It even contained a section defining and forbidding sexual harassment, by either party. But when she got to the tenth page (with many more to go), she frowned.

"Dr. Drakken, what's this about cloning?"

* * *

Shego smirked at the memory of the brief argument they had had after that, which she had ended by holding a glowing fist under his chin.

"Yeah..." she chuckled fondly, taking another bite of ice cream.

"It was meant to be..." Drakken said dreamily, his eyes lost in some place only he knew where.

Shego looked at him warily. "What do you mean...?"

Drakken startled and blushed—he'd done that several times, she realized—and then looked down into his ice cream.

"Ah, just that...you're the best evil sidekick any villain could ask for."

Shego furrowed her brow and turned her attention to finishing her dessert. They sat so close on the sofa now that there was barely room for their ice cream bowls between them. But now that she noticed it...she didn't scoot back.

"Hey...Dr. D.?" she said, deciding to stay on the train she had unwittingly hopped onto. She was starting to get curious about where it might go.

"Mm?" he looked up as he sipped his soda.

"Thanks for...respecting my boundaries."

He seemed to hold his breath. It occurred to her to ask him why he kept seeming to get flustered as they talked, but she wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer. So instead she kept going.

"It means a lot to me that you've never pried, or dug into my records, and just...left me alone here."

Drakken watched her uncertainly as he swallowed his sip of soda. "Um. You're welcome."

"I mean it," she continued. "I've never had anyone treat me with respect the way you do. Even if I do threaten you into it sometimes..."

Drakken's brow furrowed and he looked down, seeming confused. Shego wondered if he was thinking of all the times he had dragged her to his Friday karaoke sessions, made her do all the grunt work, or simply ranted to her, said rants often including spontaneous and unwanted hugs. All of that was part of her contract of course, except for the hugs. But after more than three years of it...she found she didn't actually mind.

"So...yeah. Thanks," she finished, laying her cheek on her folded arm on the back of the sofa again.

Drakken nodded and smiled back shyly, finishing his last bite of ice cream and then setting the bowl aside. He mirrored her pose again, head resting on his arm on the back of the sofa.

He felt his heart beating faster at the way she was smiling at him. It was different than any smile she'd ever given him before, including the one at the U.N. ceremony earlier that year. This smile was broader and purposeful. There was a hint of a smirk at one corner of her mouth, and she was looking at him from under half-lidded eyes.

And he realized then that that was the difference. She wasn't just watching him while he was busy with something else. She was looking _at_ him, into his eyes. Just for the sake of it. And it was lasting.

He didn't know what miracle he had accomplished to get her to look at him like that, but he didn't dare do anything to risk losing that marvelous gift. So he simply smiled back.

Minutes passed.

His heartbeat quickened ever more, but still he didn't dare do anything. Until finally she softly chuckled, and he felt safe in taking a tiny risk.

"Are you...thinking about all the good times we've had?" he ventured cautiously.

She smirked at him in amusement, but chuckled again. "If you call never-ending defeat 'good times,' then sure."

She stretched the length of her body, pointing her toes and straightening her spine, and causing her hair to fall all around her.

His heartbeat quickened again.

"We've had...some victories," he said, his smile faltering a bit. "Just not in world domination, unfortunately..."

She laughed an electric laugh, and he stared at her, watching as she continued to stretch and contort her body in different cat-like ways.

"_I've_ had some victories, Doc. You...have practiced the art of the evil villain rant."

"I've invented lots of genius...um, things!" he protested, pouting. "And the world is finally seeing my genius and throwing money at me, so nnyeh!" he finished, sticking his tongue out at her.

She laughed that beautiful laugh again and sat up, rubbing her neck with one hand and piling her hair atop her head with the other. "I'm still not sold on 'genius.' But 'mad scientist'?" she looked at him with a pleased smirk, "I'll give it to you."

Drakken turned away and started sucking down all that was left of his cream soda. She was _killing_ him with her stretching, and her laughter, and her hair. Didn't she know what she was doing?

After finishing the soda he looked back at her and blinked in surprise to find her frowning, her eyes closed as she still rubbed her neck.

"Ah...are you all right?" he asked tentatively.

"Oh, I slept on my neck funny," she said, her frown deepening.

Drakken remembered the way she had been curled in her chair the night before and how he had debated waking her to avoid that very consequence. He felt a bit guilty now that she was still in pain a full day later.

He took a breath. "Um. I could help, if...you'd like," he offered nervously.

Her eyes widened and she gave him a sidelong glance, her expression suspicious.

"Well, you...help me with the flower every day..." he explained, referencing his vines. And he did genuinely want to return the favor. Although he imagined nothing could ever match her spreading cream into his creepy mutant vine-infested skin every day.

She turned away so he couldn't see her face, but then she used both hands to pile her hair up and hold it out of the way.

Drakken's eyes widened. He had expected pain for the suggestion. But not about to retract the offer, he scooted forward and then set his hands on her shoulders.

He felt his entire body tingle at the simple touch, and he bit his lip and began gently massaging her neck. Very basic motions at first, but then he started firmly tapping his fingers up and down the sides where her muscles were the most tense.

"Oh, Dr. D..." she exclaimed.

He bit his lip harder and frowned. He wanted to tell her not to say his name that way, but doing so would reveal too much. So he remained silent.

"Where did you learn to do this?" she asked.

"Well, uh...hehe, um..." was all he could get out, focusing on helping her sore neck and on _not_ thinking about how wonderful it was to be so close to her. No, he definitely wasn't thinking about that.

She hummed in delight, and after a few short minutes he couldn't take it anymore and let go. "B-better?" he asked.

She turned suddenly to look at him. "Hey, don't stop!" she protested, but then her eyes went wide when she caught sight of his face.

She turned away quickly, still holding her hair up. Drakken silently and quickly resumed the therapeutic treatment.

Shego felt a lump forming in her throat. It was the same pattern, all over again. First Billy Scott, then Dr. Wang...and now finally Drakken.

Every man she had ever allowed herself to get close to. Every man she dared to call 'friend' and truly be herself with. It always ended up...

"Okay, that's good," she said a minute later, leaning forward and hugging her knees to her chest the second he let go. She felt, rather than heard him scoot away from her, and then she glanced back over her shoulder at him.

He had the decency to look just as upset as she was, pressed back into the corner of the sofa and mirroring her pose, his expression downcast and worried.

Ordinarily she'd have already singed his stupid ponytail with a tame shot of her glow, and had several choice words for him. But her unanswered question to herself kept pressing itself further forward in her mind each time she looked at him until she couldn't ignore it anymore.

_Why_ was she telling him all about herself?

Because of the truth she had been trying to deny for nearly a year now. It started with her first prison break after the Lil' Diablos incident, leaving him and his failure locked away out of sight in that cell. But as she tried to move on to different paths, she kept comparing every circumstance back to him. And when Kim Possible had told her about his new green woman sidekick she had the perfect excuse to go back. But it was so thin that she hardly believed it herself.

Somehow, what had started as a job had turned into her identity. A dingy lair atop a mountain had turned into her home, and her boss had become... She wasn't sure exactly how to define it. But the answer to the question was...she _wanted_ to be with him. She couldn't leave.

But the way they had been talking, the way she couldn't seem to stop herself, and the way he kept looking at her... The beginnings of a pattern that she knew only led to destruction.

She didn't want to ruin everything! Because despite countless failures, repeated prison sentences, and ridiculous contractual expectations like karaoke night...she was having the time of her life. For three years, she had been able to truly be herself, with no one telling her what to do or how to do it. She was free to make her own decisions, and any bad choices were all her own doing. And she could deal with all of it, because she was _free_.

She didn't want another bad choice right now to destroy all of that.

"Shego?" Drakken's voice startled her. She turned around and scooted back, pressing into her own end of the couch and then cautiously met his eyes. He continued. "Would you change anything?"

Her lips parted in a silent gasp. "What...?"

"About...your life? Deciding to become a villain? And...how you ended up here?" he continued.

She felt herself relax after he had clarified, and found the safest path was to give the question thought. On the surface it was easy. But thinking back through all of the memories she had dredged up over the past two days, she realized it wasn't.

"I wouldn't," Drakken interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up at him. He meant he wouldn't change his own life, right? "Because if I hadn't dropped out of college to pursue a career in evil...I never would have met you."

Her eyes found his again. He looked a bit afraid that she might blast him, but the sentiment was sincere. And she knew him well enough now to know...he meant only what he meant, and nothing more.

It was perhaps the sweetest thing she had ever heard. And despite herself, she smiled.

She looked down at her knees thoughtfully. "There are lots of things I'd change..." she finally said, thinking about her parents and her failure to get her brothers out from under Global Justice's thumb. "But I like who I am."

She looked at him again and saw his smile start to return, and his posture begin to relax.

"Well... Then that's all that matters," he said conclusively.

Shego rolled her eyes and shook her head. So cliche.

She relaxed and rested her head on the back of the sofa again. Drakken had the decency to still look a bit uncomfortable.

Served him right, she thought.

But then...she thought of what she had said before, about his respect for her. Even in the awkwardness that had just passed between them...he hadn't violated it. She knew him well enough to know that his offer to help her strained neck had been genuine.

And _that_ thought gave her pause: She _knew_ him. And she had finally started to let him know her.

Maybe...destruction wasn't inevitable?

"Dr. D...?"

"Um. Yes?"

"There is...one thing I think I would change, now. But I'm not sure. Will you help me try it out?"

He crossed his legs and nodded at her, eyes wide and blue face smiling innocently.

She bit her lip and held back a chuckle. He was kind of cute, she thought, as she stood up and stretched. Two days of talking had exhausted her.

She stepped around to the back of the sofa until she was next to him, and he had to lean back to see her face.

She took an uncertain breath. It was the final thing she needed to take back, to truly have control of her life and be free. "I'm...thinking of going back to my real name. Just between us though. Wouldn't want to just give away my secret identity..."

Drakken blinked at her. "Oh."

"But no one...not even my brothers, have called me by it since before the comet hit. So I'm not sure," she explained, crossing her arms with a shrug.

Drakken waited. And then when she didn't continue, he asked. "What...is your name?"

Shego closed her eyes and thought back through her life again. Before her job and before college, before costumes and even before the comet, into a happy little tree-house...

_"Let's play heroes!" Brendan said, climbing through the trap door._

_"Again?" Brody whined._

_"Yeah, and Dylan and Alex can be the civilians," the husky boy of thirteen continued as their sister handed one baby up through the trapdoor, hauling the other up herself._

_"What if I want to be the villain this time, huh?" Brody complained, flopping onto their little wooden bench. "This game would be more fun if there were someone to actually fight."_

_"No way, Bro'!" Brendan said, picking up his toy sword and raising it triumphantly. "'Cause we're family, and we're a team. We'll _always_ be a team!" he said, beaming his smile at his each of his siblings in turn. "Right, Rachel?"_

_Sitting on the closed trapdoor, the twelve-year-old, hazel-eyed, raven-haired girl cuddled her twin baby brothers into her lap and smiled up at her eldest brother._

_"Right!" she agreed._

Shego opened her eyes and pushed her hair out of her face, for a moment reaching for a headband she hadn't worn for three years. Then she lowered her arms to her sides as she answered him.

"It's...Rachel," she said quietly, holding her breath.

Drakken studied her, as if trying it out in his mind. And then, he smiled.

"That's lovely," he said.

She smiled shyly and smoothed her hair, wondering why her heart had leapt in her chest when he said that.

"Yeah...just don't tell anyone," she said.

"N-no, never!" he said, affronted.

She glanced at him again, covering the look with a yawn and a deep stretch. "I'm gonna take an early night. I'll see you in the morning, Doc."

"All right," he nodded, settling back into the sofa again and looking away from her at nothing.

He had that dopey grin on his face again. Her heart fluttering, she leaned down and placed a soft kiss on his chubby blue cheek.

"Thanks for listening," she said in his ear, and then quickly turned to hide her blush and started away toward her room. She didn't need to see his face to know that he was most certainly blushing too.

As she was about to turn down the hallway he called after her, and she paused and looked back.

"Good night...um...Rachel," he said with a soft, affectionate smile.

It sounded so right.

She smiled back, returning his gaze in full measure. "Good night, Dr. D."

the end.

* * *

_A/N: Post-story text: Here is the impact I infer that Shego had on the people in her life... Clearly, her brothers finally decided to get away from GJ and were successful, keeping the tower and their stuff. And Hego went to community college, got a two-year degree, and then got his Bueno Nacho job. Betty Director learned her lesson and GJ became the better organization that we saw in the canon. And now we know how the Director twins got their eyepatches, and how Gemini got his bionic hand._

_So this fic started in my mind years ago... The prologue I wrote, continuing Shego's interrupted line from the episode "Stop Team Go," was what started it all. And in thinking of how Shego could possibly become such an evil villain after what canon shows us is years of being a hero, I wondered...and I figured she must have started out as something like Kim, but then somehow it all went wrong. And part of Shego's hate for Kim is jealousy that she got the life that Shego felt was supposed to be hers. I very much believe in the idea that a person can actively choose to do wrong when the have full awareness of what's right, and that Shego simply chose evil because it worked better for her. If nothing else, it distracted her from her life's woes. And so with that basis, I just started writing, and the story wrote itself._

_In addition to Shego's backstory is how I truly interpret Shego's and Drakken's relationship (my other fics about them are very AU-ish in my own mind). Since the main focus was the backstory, I didn't elaborate on them as much as I would have liked. Drakken respects her too much to act on his feelings, let alone even think about them. But for story's sake, I had him thinking about it here. And Shego is very much at home with him (hello, season 4), but she's built up her tough exterior such that she'll never let anyone in. Ma~ybe, just maybe, in their year of playing good and not having anything else to focus on, they could be brave and test the waters of their relationship. But they're the slow cautious type. Not likely anything we'd ever get to see. Once they're fully back into the evil business, they'd go back to what's comfortable._

_Shego's name was also inspiration to actually get me to write this fic, since it's been in my mind for years. For the longest time I had decided that her name was "Rhonda" since I consider it a "tough chick" name. But then thinking about her earlier life as a hero, and realizing that she was a child once with parents, I couldn't go with that name. My next choice was actually "Valerie" and in the end I think I like that one best since it can fit both a tough girl, and a nice girl. But it just didn't capture the innocence and tragedy of her life that is my head-canon. So I thought about it and settled on "Rachel" for both the aforementioned reasons, and because I've always thought that whatever her name was, it needed a harder sound in the middle like her alias. Also, the name "Rachel" means "ewe" and sheep are known to be followers, not leaders, and Shego has definitely chosen the path of follower as a villain, so...there you have it. _

_Finally, the chapter titles are all lines from the song "Snow on the Sahara" by Anggun. The title lines aren't consecutive so they don't mean anything together, they just reference the chapter content. I listened to the song a lot while writing. And Sara Bareilles's song "Gravity" came to mind during the editing process._

_And...that's that! I hope you enjoyed!_


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